
.:lSc^^ 





















t<*L <i-C«l- 






n^-^ 


";.<-- :,, 


c_ «r"« ^"^st" <;*'» 




1^^ 


• C <?- c 


<cr «^ <'di^ <2'«.<_ 


< 


^M^^ 


"--.<' .r> 


■«^ <«:._ '-«3r *■"< 


4 


^ 






4i 


^ 






<« 
<« 


^^^ 


"^ C ' • 


cr: •■^«: •^k_.<1'< 


4C 


^^^ 




4t:jc <-Ci- ^^^, <2''«- ' 


,^»- ^^^ 


^^= 


'"'O ' 


Ce <f<i <SC& C C 


^cz 


^^te=. 




^^ <;«?- "^P^- «^^ "^ 


••d 


^5= 


°~r, , 


<-T <C^ «*^ C C 


^^£Z" 



|LIBRi\rLYOFCOiNGrLESS.I 

I # 

j|i,.p.E^^^tp„risw?;r„ \ 



I f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA f 



cc: c • ^<l 


















^ 






c^c ^^ ^< 



<Zic: 


















^ %: 









^ c-c-c c^c* 









«' 



Jias^^s: 



4fll 


Z-3<~-- 


-9 


Cjat 


s 




•^ 




ta 

























fC^"®. 


'Ci^ <-.• 


<i«^- % 


=^ ,«?: "C; 1. •^.^ - 


^lT' *< 


'^^c csa- 


<^^.,<r ■ 


^tT^ *■-- * 


ccc^ 


<1"C. ' 


<C1 «^"^ * 


■<JC <-^. '<3 ' <£. 


<cr <^^ * 


2£<, '< 


« <5 ' <.. 


^1::^ •■' 




«SL -C'^' 


' ^^Z: -^ ^ 


^g< < 


i«, ■<C/. ■^^ 


^^^^C; *i^- 


r'<ac < 


«: 'C/«C: 


■^^C-?*i*^ 


r:<?c 


c4c._.- t'cc;. 


<^cr<c5 


"cc <m^^ -C^c.-; 


^tl'^C 


E;<ic 


':*IK.-...'5i^<.' 


^^, '• ^ 


rtvc 


<:<at_ <;^^ 


^d_ '- "^ 






•rfci <x<: 
















«c < -t ^^^- 5-^ 


" c^KL -<i<i<: ^C 


=■'■ c<®t 


■ri~'' <;<r 


'J& ^'^ -^ ^^ <S^ 


<itds < ^'■^ " ^CT 


,.-«< 


d <:<! 




•tad <:«' ,^P, 


,;.<»:. 














^/S^ '^O^ ■■ 


■ ■'.. <; ■<-,- 


<^-r C 1^ <:■< 


^tc^^^^QI^^IK 


^^iSS^ 


■=-^-' <:•:<: 


. ^^^.t^C*- <4-< 


^IV ci c ^CT' 




«^ «cri 






^sL < < <rr *f 


V@^€ 


rf'.t ^1 




*SC c X "^CL * 




^ >*^r ^' 


^cy'^ -^j ^""^^ 


/" «3Krv.<."- *c: *' 


P^^ 




^c:<< -^^ "^^ 


«k: <~c <^-*;^ 


^^ 












-S?^ ^^'K^ 

^<^ 1^^^ 




2^ 



^ %& 



«cr<:;«a^ 















^4: 









X c CI 












/ 



d-C, 



V 




HISTORY 



OF THE 



Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

On June 17, 1775, 

FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES IN PRINT 
AND MANUSCRIPT. 



BY 

GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



WITH A MAP OF THE BATTLE-GROUND. 



M 



BOSTON: 

LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 
1S75. 



v^%^ 



Copyright, 

George E. Ellis. 

1S75. 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson 6= Son, 



THE 



BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



PREPARATIONS. 

'THHE reader of the following pages is supposed to be 
informed of the state of affairs in and around Boston 
at the time of the opening of hostilities at Lexington and 
Concord, between the provincials and the royal forces. The 
expedition sent into the country by the British commander 
on April 19th, to seize or destroy the military supplies which 
had been gathered at Concord, under the full prescience that 
they would be needed in the final rupture that could no 
longer be averted, was but partially successful in its objects, 
was inglorious in its whole character and results to the in- 
vaders, and decisive only in its effects upon the purpose and 
resolve of an outraged people. 

The Continental Congress at Philadelphia was still delib- 
erating, averting a declaration which would break the last 
bond of allegiance to the mother country, and vainly hoping 
still to settle the strife by negotiation. Reinforcements of 
foreign troops and supplies were constantly arriving in Bos- 
ton. Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne came, as generals, on the 
25th of May. Bitterness, ridicule, and boasting, with all the 
irritating taunts of a mercenary soldiery, were freely poured 
on the patriots and on the " mixed multitude " which com- 
posed the germ of their army yet to be. The British forces 
had cooped themselves up in Boston, and the provincials 
determined that they should remain there, with no mode of 
exit save by the sea. The pear-shaped peninsula, hung to the 
mainland only by the stem called the " Neck," over which the 



4 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

tide-waters sometimes washed, was equally an inconvenient 
position for crowding regiments in warlike array, and a con- 
venient one for the extemporized army which was about to 
beleaguer them there. 

The islands in the harbor, which were, for the most part, 
covered with trees and growing crops of hay and grain, with 
horses, sheep, and cattle, were envied prizes for the soldiers, 
who lacked fuel, fodder, and fresh meat. The daring enter- 
prise of those who lived in the settlements near on the main- 
land, attempting the ventures by night, or in the broad light 
of day, had stripped these islands of their precious wealth, 
much to the chagrin of the invaders. The light-house in the 
harbor was afterwards burned. In the skirmishes brought on 
by these exciting but perilous feats, especially in that attend- 
ing the successful removal of stock and hay on Noddle's 
Island, now East Boston, and on Hog Island, the provincials 
obtained some valuable implements and muniments, especially 
four 4-pounders and twelve swivels. And from this begin- 
ning, all through the seven years of war that followed, the 
rebels were largely indebted for their weapons and accoutre- 
ments, and much other material of prime necessity and value 
to them, to their raids and privateering successes against the 
enemy. 

The town of Charlestown, which lay under the enemy's 
guns, had contained a population of between two and three 
thousand. The interruption of all the employments of peace, 
and the proximity of danger, had brought poverty and suffer- 
ing upon the people. They had been steadily leaving the 
town, with such of their effects as they could carry with them. 
It proved to be well for them that they had acted upon the 
warning. It would seem that there were less than two hun- 
dred of its inhabitants remaining in it at the time of the battle, 
when the flames kindled by the enemy and bombs from a 
battery on Copp's Hill laid it in ashes. 

On the third day after the affair at Concord, the Provincial 
Congress again assembled, voted to raise at once 13,000 men, 



THE PROVINCIAL ARMY. 5 

to rally at Cambridge and the neighborhood, and asked aid 
from the other provinces, to which Connecticut, Rhode Island, 
and New Hampshire responded. The forts, magazines, and 
arsenals, such as they then were, were secured for the coun- 
try. Then, for the first time, the title of enemies became the 
synonyme of the English, military or civil, and of those of 
tory proclivities who sympathized with them. General Gage, 
the commander, was denounced as the agent of tyranny and 
oppression. An account of the affair on April 19th was sent 
to England, with an address closing with the words, " Appeal- 
ing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to 
die or be free." 

By advice received from Lord Dartmouth, the head of the 
War Department, General Gage issued a proclamation on the 
1 2th of June, in which he declared the discontents to be in a 
state of rebellion, offered a full pardon to all, with the excep- 
tion of Hancock and Samuel Adams, who would lay down 
their arms and bow to his authority, and announced that mar- 
tial law was now in force. 

This proclamation, issued on the first day of the week, was 
to be illustrated by a fearful commentary before another Sun- 
day came., 

THE PROVINCIAL ARMY. 

Of the 15,000 men then gathered, by the cry of war, at 
Cambridge and Roxbury, all virtually, but not by formal 
investment, under the command of General Ward, nearly 
10,000 belonged to Massachusetts, and the remainder to New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They have been 
designated since, at various times and by different writers, 
under the extreme contrast of terms, as an " organized army," 
and a " mob." Either of these terms would be equally inap- 
propriate. The circumstances under which the men who 
were to constitute our army were drawn together, and the 
guise in which they came, without other concert or preparation 
than a wide-spread sense that almost any day with its alarm 



6 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREEDS] HILL. 

and outrage might summon them from field, barn, and work- 
shop, will best define and describe them as they present 
themselves before us now. The hardships they were to bear 
and the services they were to perform may secure to them as 
rightful a claim to be called soldiers as if they had been drilled 
in Pickering or Steuben's manual, and had been accoutred 
and armed with all the skill of a contractor and from all the 
resources of an arsenal. Our troops were " minute-men " 
extemporized into fragmentary companies and skeleton regi- 
ments. The officers, chosen on the village-green or in its 
public-house, paying for the honor by a treat, or perhaps 
because they kept the premises where the treat could be most 
conveniently furnished, were not commissioned or ranked 
as the leaders of an army for campaign service. The yeo- 
men of town and village had not come together at the sum- 
mons of a commander-in-chief through adjutant, herald, or 
advertisement. They came unbidden, at an alarm from the 
bell on their meeting-house, or from a post-rider, or from the 
telegrams transmitted by tongue and ear. And they came 
for what they were and as they were, with their light summer 
clothing, in shirt and frock and apron ; with what was left 
from their last meals in their pantries packed with a few 
"notions " in sack or pillow-case, and with the ducking-guns, 
fowling-pieces, or shaky muskets used in old times against the 
vermin and game in the woods and the Indian skulking in 
the thicket. And for the most part they were as free to go 
away as they had been to come. They were enlisted after a 
fashion, some prime conditions of which were their own con- 
venience or pleasure. They might stay, as some of them 
expressed it, " for a spell, to see what was going on in camp," 
or they might plead the state of their farms, or the condition 
of their families, as a reason — not an excuse — for going home, 
with the promise of a return better prepared for what might 
be wanted of them. Such of them as came from the sea- 
board might bring with them old sails for tents, while the 
midsummer days made it scarcely a hardship to many to 



THE PROVINCIAL ARMY. 7 

have only the heavens for a roof. Generally their towns 
were expected to keep them supplied with food. 

The men who made the centre and the flanks of the camp 
at Cambridge constituted an irregular and undisciplined as- 
semblage, with the spirit and intent of a military host, but 
not yet organized into an army. They were without accou- 
trements or uniform, with no commissary, no military chest, 
no hospitals, no roll-call, no camp routine. The Provincial 
Congress had the matter of organization under debate two 
days before the battle in Charlestown, and had appointed a 
committee " to consider the claims and pretensions of the 
colonels." Recruits and stragglers were continually coming in ; 
and many groupings on the scene might have suggested a 
picnic, had such a thing then been known, for there were not 
wanting mothers, daughters, and sisters, as lookers-on among 
them. A most characteristic feature of the local and tradi- 
tional usages of Massachusetts is illustrated in the fact that 
of the company of minute-men in Danvers, Asa Putnam, a 
deacon of the church, was chosen captain, and the Rev. Mr. 
Wadsworth, the pastor, his lieutenant. 

The forces then mustered at Cambridge as a central camp, 
and, stretching from the left at Chelsea almost round to Dor- 
chester on the right, for nearly three quarters of a circle, 
were indeed not organized, nor yet had they any character- 
istic of a mere mob. They combined in fact four independent 
armies, united in resistance to a foreign enemy. They cer- 
tainly did not constitute a national army, for there was as 
yet no nation to adopt, maintain, and command them. They 
were not under the authority of the Continental Congress, for 
the authority of that Congress was not as yet acknowledged, 
nor had that Congress as yet recognized those forces, nor 
decided that it meant to come to the fight, and so would have 
need of an army. General Ward was in command of the 
Massachusetts soldiers. The New Hampshire regiments had 
been put temporarily, and for the occasion, under his orders. 
The soldiers coming with their officers from Connecticut and 



8 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL, 

Rhode Island were not under the command of Ward, save as 
the friendly purpose which led them to volunteer their arms 
in defence of a sister colony, would be accompanied by the 
courtesy that would make them subordinate allies. Each of 
the Provinces had raised, commissioned, and assumed the sup- 
ply of its respective forces, holding them subject to their 
several orders. After the battle in Charlestown, the Com- 
mittee of War in Connecticut ordered their generals, Spencer 
and Putnam, while they were on the territory of this Province, 
to regard General Ward as the commander-in-chief, and sug- 
gested to Rhode Island and New Hampshire to issue the 
same instructions to their soldiers. 

These provincial troops also were respectively almost as 
loosely organized and officered as was the combined army 
which they helped to constitute. Their field-officers held 
their places at the favor of the privates, and were liable to be 
superseded or disobeyed ; while even after Washington took 
the command of the adopted army, he was constantly annoyed 
and provoked by the obstinate resolution of the soldiers to 
assign place and rank according to their own inclinations and 
partialities. 

It is evident that forces composed of such elements, drawn 
together by the excitement of the hour, and subject at any 
time to discord and disintegration, could act in concert only 
by yielding themselves to the influence of the spirit which 
had summoned them from farm and workshop at the busiest 
season of the year, when each of them was most needed at 
home. Yet many of those provincial soldiers, though undis- 
ciplined by any thing like regular service, were by no means 
unused to the severities and exactions of a military life, hav- 
ing had experience in the Indian and French wars. They 
had learned, above all the other accomplishments of their pro- 
fession, the art of covering themselves, especially their legs, 
behind an earthen screen, the butt of a tree, a thicket of 
bushes, or a stone wall. 

One regiment of artillery, with nine field-pieces, had been 



THE PROVINCIAL ARMY. 9 

raised in Massachusetts, and put under command of the 
famous engineer, Colonel Gridley. But this was not yet full 
nor thoroughly organized. A self-constituted Provincial Con- 
gress discharged the legislative functions, and a Committee of 
Safety, elected by that congress, filled the executive place of 
Governor and Council, confining its directions chiefly to 
military affairs. There was also a Council of War, with an 
undefined range as to advice and authority, sometimes mis- 
chievously interfering with or confusing or crossing the 
arrangements, advice, and measures of the Committee. 

General Artemas Ward was a conscientious and judicious ^"^ 
patriot. In the French war he had earned some military 
experience and fame. He was in the expedition under Gen- 
eral Abercrombie, and returned with the rank of lieutenant- 
colonel. In his civil and representative offices he had warmly 
espoused the cause of his country. On October 27, 1774, the 
Provincial Congress, in which he was a delegate, appointed 
him a general officer, and on May 19 following, Commander- 
in-chief. As such he served at Cambridge till the arrival of 
Washington, On the very day of the battle in Charlestown, 
when the great chieftain was selected for his high service. 
Ward was chosen by the Continental Congress as its first 
major-general. Though he was only in his forty-eighth year 
when he was burdened with the responsibility of the opening 
warfare, his body was infirm from disease and exposure. 

Lieutenant-General Thomas, two years the senior of Ward, 
was second in command. He was distinguished for talents, 
patriotism, and military qualities. He accepted his commis- 
sion on May 27. During the siege of Boston, that followed 
the battle in Charlestown, he commanded a brigade at Rox- 
bury, in proximity to the British lines. He afterwards took 
possession of and intrenched Dorchester Heights, which bore 
a similar relation and position to Boston on the south as did 
those of Charlestown on the north, and he was thus the 
instrument of driving the British soldiers from the town. He 
died in May, 1776, while in command in Canada. 



lO THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

General Seth Pomeroy, likewise famous in the border wars, 
continued to serve under the appointment of the Provincial 
Congress. 

General Israel Putnam preceded his Connecticut troops in 
hurrying to the scene of war on the news of the affair at Lex- 
ington and Concord. His men soon followed him, with like 
enthusiasm. The New Hampshire troops, on their arrival at 
Medford, made choice of Colonel John Stark as their leader. 
Colonel Nathaniel Greene commanded a regiment from Rhode 
Island. 

THE SCENE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 

The steady processes and transformations by which time, 
expansive growth, the necessities of crowded human life, 
enterprise, and improvement have changed the natural feat- 
ures of the scene now to be recalled, may require some effort 
from those now on the stage to reproduce its distinctive 
features. On no spot of this earth have such processes 
wrought more effectually than in the neighborhood of Bos- 
ton. The visitor to the field of Waterloo is baffled in his 
efforts to trace the manoeuvres of its great day, even by so 
slight a chano-e in its natural features as the removal of a 
ridge of earth to build the mound on which rests the memo- 
rial of the Belgic lion. But the levelling of hill-tops, the 
narrowing of river-courses by piers and wharves, the exten- 
sion of bridges, the filling in of thousands of acres of irri- 
gated flats, and the thick planting of dwellings, marts of 
trade, and manufactories, have strangely transformed the sur- 
roundings of the storied summit. Some thirty years ago, 
one who took his stand upon the top of the true Bunker 
Hill, before its crown had been removed, could trace the 
lines of the works which the British erected there with skill 
and complication after they took possession of the town. 
The battle summit, Breed's Hill, — not known by that name 
till after the action, — has not been reduced at the top, but it 



THE SCENE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. II 

is so closed around that few of the points to which reference 
has to be made in tracing the events of the day are visible 
from it. Yet, by mounting the tall shaft, the visitor with an 
instructed eye, looking in turn through each of its four win- 
dows, may with some satisfaction of his curiosity reproduce 
some of the more important features of the scene. Those 
who were the prime actors in it would doubtless prefer to 
gaze upon it from their own monument as it now is. We, 
however, try for the hour to restore their panorama. 

The three quarters of a circle of headlands, slopes, penin- 
sulas, and eminences, once united by green levels, or divided 
by watercourses, and embracing a circuit of more than 
twenty miles, which we may now sweep from the windows of 
the monument, was at the time arrayed in all the beauty of 
its summer garb ; but it was stirring with all the signs of 
military occu})ancy and activity. The wide-spread wings of a 
patriotic army, such as has been described, extended over it, 
enclosing a dark spot with a coveted prize in the good town 
of Boston, Seaward, were the fair islands of the Bay. The 
enemy was rich in every form of water-craft, ships of war, 
gun-boats, transports, floats, and barges. But even with these 
they had to be very watchful, as they ventured near the shore 
of main or island ; for never were rats watched more patiently 
at their holes by skilled mousers, than were they by keen-eyed 
patriots, as yet not enrolled, but prospecting on their own 
charges and gains. A portion of Colonel Gerrish's regiment 
from Essex and Middlesex, and a detachment of New Hamp- 
shire troops stationed on the hills of Chelsea, formed the tip 
of the left wing of the patriot array. All along the eastern 
seaboard, to Cape Ann and Portsmouth, were watchful spies 
on the alert to spread the alarm if the British should any- 
where attempt a landing. Colonels Reed and Stark, next in 
the line, were stationed at Medford with their New Hamp- 
shire regiments. Lechmere's Point, at East Cambridge, was 
guarded against the enemy's landing, to which it offered 
great facilities, by parts of Colonel Little's and other regi- 



12 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

ments. General Ward, with the main body of about 9,000 
troops, and four companies of artillery, occupied Cambridge, 
its college halls as they then were, its English church, the 
vacated dwelhngs of some tories who had sought a change of 
air, and the intervals of field and woodland. 

The broad spaces of oozy and tide-soaked marsh, which 
doubled the present width of the rivers, were about equally a 
protection and a hindrance to military operations on either 
side. We must forget such things as bridges, for there was 
not one within the bounds of the historic scenes, save on the 
side of Cambridge towards Brighton. The salt flats had no 
causeways over them, and the shortest, even the only way 
between any two places, was a great way round. All the 
numerous points of highland, the farms, and the main roads, 
were cautiously defended or guarded. Lieutenant-General 
Thomas, with 5,000 troops of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut, constituted the right wing of the army 
at Roxbury and Dorchester. 

Charlestown itself, like Boston, was also a pear-shaped 
peninsula, swelling roundly to the sea, into which flowed the 
Charles and the Mystic, whose waters approached so closely at 
the stem or neck, uniting it to the mainland, that one might 
stand upon it and toss a stone into the borders of either 
river. Charlestown, too, like Boston, had originally its five 
hill-tops, — for Boston's trimount designated only the three 
peaks of its Beacon Hill, and it had, besides, its Fort Hill 
and its Copp's Hill. The lowest of Charlestown's hills was 
a place of graves, where some of the stones to this day show 
the scars from the British cannon. The next, or Town Hill, 
was the public centre of the municipality. Moulton's Point, 
whence the bridge to Chelsea now starts, and where the British 
forces made their first landing to assault the American works, 
has been wholly levelled within a quarter of a century. Of 
this, as of the other two summits, more is to be said by- 
and-by. 

The patriot army, thus extended, could be reached for 



THE BRITISH ARMY IN BOSTON. 13 

assault by land only across Roxbury Neck, at which point, 
however, the intrenchments of the enemy and the safeguards 
of the provincials seemed to be equally secure. To a certain 
extent, also, the exposure of so many places in the American 
lines to injury from the armed ships and the floating batteries 
of the British was offset by shoal waters, swamps, and inter- 
secting creeks. 

THE BRITISH ARMY IN BOSTON. 

Such were the constitution and the disposition of the pro- 
vincial forces when they found themselves engaged in the 
strange, but emergent, work of beleaguering their own chief 
town of Boston. That little peninsula was thus completely 
invested and hemmed in. A few days after the affair at 
Lexington, when virtually the siege began. General Gage, the 
British commander, at the solicitation' of some of the leading 
citizens assembled in Faneuil Hall, had, by a mutual under- 
standing, entered into an agreement that such of the inhabi- 
tants as wished to depart from the town should be at liberty 
to do so, if they would leave their arms behind them and 
covenant not to engage in any hostility against his army. 
The agreement was availed of by many of the suffering and 
frightened people, whose means of living and opportunities to 
procure food were made precarious by the siege ; and they 
removed with their families and such of their effects as they 
could carry with them. The provincials reciprocated this 
indulgence by allowing such of those within their lines and 
of those who had been driven in from the country, as had 
tory proclivities, to go into the town for a refuge. But the 
original freedom and fulness of this understanding, on the 
part of General Gage, were soon reduced by a very strict 
examination of those who sought to go out of the town, and 
by a rigid search of the effects which they wished to take 
with them. The tories, who clung to his protection, likewise 
objected to the free and loose privilege of withdrawal allowed 
to those in sympathy with the rebels, and to making the town 



14 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

a refuge only for the loyalists, as in the event of an assault 
by the provincials their violence would have so much more 
of excitement to inflame it, and so much less of caution or for- 
bearance to restrain it. Several of the inhabitants remained 
in it from different motives : some as devoted loyalists ; some 
as timid neutrals ; some as spies, to watch each hostile move- 
ment and to communicate it to their friends outside. Some of 
these last, together with many deserters from the army, would 
occasionally cross the waters by swimming, or in skiffs by 
night, or would even contrive to pass the Roxbury lines, and 
either enter the American army or seek farm-work in the 
country. For many years after the war there were scattered 
over New England many stragglers, as well as some respect- 
able householders, who found it embarrassing, when ques- 
tioned, either to trace their heritage on this soil or to account 
for their exile to it. The secret, known to themselves only, 
was, that they were deserters, or the children of deserters. 
The farming towns of New Hampshire and New York in this 
way adopted many of the subjects of Great Britain, and more 
still of the Hessian mercenaries. 

Among those who did not leave Boston were some, both 
loyalists and patriots, who remained there mainly to secure 
and watch over property which they could not remove. After 
hostilities commenced, General Gage, of course, regarded the 
citizens as alike prisoners, either in the same sense in which he 
was himself under restraint, or as abettors of those who were 
his enemies. By the spies and deserters our officers generally 
received full information of all that occurred in Boston during 
the whole time of its investment by the provincials. The 
v/ord " British " had now become odious and exasperating ; and 
though the regular army, encamped in the capital, might 
affect to despise the undisciplined multitude which kept it in 
such close quarters, it was compelled to regard its opponents 
as powerful and formidable. The population of the town, 
independent of the military, was then about 18,000. To all 
those who were not in sympathy with them the British be- 



THE BRITISH ARMY IN BOSTON. 1 5 

haved in an insulting and exasperating manner. Only from 
private letters, which came to light long after all risk from the 
exposure of their contents had been quieted, did those of a 
later generation learn the details of the sufferings and the 
insults endured by some of those whose circumstances com- 
pelled them to remain in Boston. During the nine months 
following the battle in Charlestown, through which the 
beleaguered British were compelled to bear their confinement, 
the constraint and sufferings of their own humiliation in- 
creased, and they avenged themselves by harsh and wanton 
deeds of mischief and vengefulness. To show, as members of 
the English Church establishment, their contempt of congre- 
gational places of worship, they removed the pews and pulpit 
from the Old South meeting-house, and, covering the floor 
with earth, they converted it into a riding-school for Burgoyne's 
squadron of cavalry. The two eastern galleries were allowed 
to remain, one for spectators, the other for a liquor-shop, 
while the fire in the stove was occasionally kindled by books 
and pamphlets from the library of a former pastor. Dr. 
Prince, which were in a room in the tower. One of the most 
precious manuscripts of the early Plymouth Colony, Governor 
Bradford's History, was purloined from that library, and car- 
ried to England. It was traced, only a few years ago, to the 
library of the Bishop of London, at Fulham ; and he allowed 
a copy of it to be taken for publication by the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, Brattle Street meeting-house was treated 
with similar indignity. The steeple of the West meeting- 
house was destroyed, because it had been used for a signal- 
station. The Old North meeting-house and several dwellings 
were consumed for fuel. As the cold weather came on durins" 
■ the siege, all who were in Boston, friends and foes alike, suf- 
fered extremely for the lack of vegetables and fresh provisions 
and firewood, and the sills of the wharves were stripped for 
that purpose. 

At the time of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord 
there were about 4,000 British troops in Boston and at the 



l6 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

Castle, The number was increased to more than 10,000 
before the action in Charlestown, The best disciphned and 
most experienced soldiers in the kingdom, many of them 
freshly laurelled in the recent wars on the European continent, 
composed the invading army. Gage, the governor, and com- 
mander-in-chief, had long resided in America, and had mar- 
ried here. He came originally as a lieutenant under Braddock, 
and was with that general when he received his mortal wound. 
He had been Governor of Montreal, had succeeded General 
Amherst in command of the British forces on this continent, 
and Hutchinson, as Governor of Massachusetts. He had con- 
stantly, and even violently, favored the oppressive measures 
of the British ministry which brought on the war. He had 
strongly fortified Boston by a double line of intrenchments 
crossing the Neck, and by batteries there, and also upon the 
Common commanding Roxbury and Cambridge, upon Copp's 
Hill commanding Charlestown, upon Fort Hill, now levelled, 
upon the northern extremity of the town commanding the 
harbor, and upon West Boston Point. There were, besides, 
at least twenty-five armed vessels in the harbor. Bating the 
lack of fresh provisions and fuel, already referred to, the army 
was lavishly supplied for camp and field. 

THE COMBATANTS CONFRONTED. 

Thus confronted, both armies seemed ahke confident of 
success and anxious for a trial, though each had its own 
reasons for apprehension and the consciousness of weak 
points exposed. The British were naturally mortified at their 
condition as besieged. They looked with misgiving to the 
heights on either hand, at Charlestown and Dorchester, and 
were forming plans for occupying them, having decided to 
make a movement for that purpose on the i8th of June. 
They regarded, or professed to regard, their opponents as 
rude, unskilled, and cowardly farmers, and were nettled at 
being kept at bay by an army of men in shirt-sleeves and 



THE COMBATANTS CONFRONTED. 1 7 

calico frocks, carrying fowling-pieces hardly any two of which 
were of the same calibre. 

The provincials did not feel their lack of discipline, nor 
realize what would be the consequences of it, as they should 
have done. They were restless under restraint ; they were 
used, so far as they had had any military experience, only to 
skirmishes, and thought such would be the contest before 
them. Yet in the Council of War and in the Committee of 
Safety there was a difference of opinion as to the safe and 
expedient measures to be pursued. If the heights of Charles- 
town were once occupied by the provincials, they would have 
to be held against a constant cannonade, if not also an assault. 
The fire of the enemy could not long be returned, as there 
were but eleven barrels of powder in the camp, and these 
contained one-sixth of the whole stock in the province. Gen- 
eral Ward, and Joseph Warren, who was chairman of the 
Committee of Safety, and had been elected major-general on the 
14th of June, — not yet commissioned, — were doubtful about 
the expediency of intrenching on Bunker Hill. General Put- 
nam was earnest in his advocacy of the measure. He said, 
" The Americans are not at all afraid of their heads, though 
very much afraid of their legs : if you cover these, they will 
fight for ever." Pomeroy coincided with Putnam. He said 
he was willing to attack the enemy with five cartridges to a 
man, for he had been accustomed, in hunting with three 
charges of powder, to bring home two or three deer. Daring 
enterprise prevailed in the Council, and it was resolved that 
the heights of Charlestown, which had been reconnoitred the 
month previous by Colonels Gridley and Henshaw, and Mr. 
Devens, should be fortified. On the 15th of June, the Com- 
mittee of Safety, by a secret vote, which was not recorded till 
the 19th, advised the taking possession of Bunker's Hill and 
Dorchester Heights. On the next day the Provincial Con- 
gress, as a counterblast to General Gage's proclamation, by 
which Hancock and Adams had been excepted from the 
proffer of a general amnesty, issued a like instrument, in 

3 



l8 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

which his Excellency General Gage and Admiral Graves were 
the scape-goats. 

It was amid the full splendor, luxuriance, and heat of our 
summer, when rich crops were waving upon all the hills and 
valleys around, that the Council of War decided to carry into 
execution the vote of the Committee of Safety. We may put 
aside the question as to prudence or promise of the enter- 
prise, as being equally difficult of decision and unimportant, 
save as the misgivings of those who predicted that the defi- 
ciency of ammunition would endanger a failure, were proved 
by the result to be well grounded. That result, as we shall 
see, was that the intrepid provincials, with the aid of a hastily 
raised earthen redoubt, a slight breastwork, and a rail-fence, 
twice staggered and repulsed an assailing body of disciplined 
soldiers of thrice their numbers, gallantly led on by coura- 
geous officers. On a third assault the provincials were driven 
from hill and field, the probability being, as even some of the 
assailants admitted, that if they had had ammunition and 
bayonets they would have kept the ground and won the day. 

On Friday, June i6th, the same day on which Washington 
was officially informed in the congress at Philadelphia of his 
appointment to the command of the continental army about 
to be enlisted. General Ward issued orders to Colonels Pres- 
cott and Bridge, and the commandant of Colonel Frye's regi- 
ment, to have their men ready and prepared for immediate 
service. They were all yeomen from Middlesex and Essex 
counties, and were habituated to the hard labors of a farm 
beneath a summer's sun. Captain Gridley's new company of 
artillery, and 120 men from the Connecticut regiment, under 
the command of Captain Knowlton, were included in the 
order. The whole force may have numbered, but could not 
have exceeded, 1,200 men. 



COMMANDER OF THE PROVINCIALS. I9 



THE COMMANDER OF THE PROVINCIALS IN THE 
BATTLE. 

In r8i8, a controversy arose concerning the command in 
this action. Who was actually or rightfully its military head ? 
This question, which most strangely and most unfortunately 
became mingled with party politics, was very earnestly and 
passionately discussed. As is usual in such cases where there 
is more than one opinion or side for partisanship, there were 
very many conflicting views and judgments. Every possible 
or conceivable suggestion as to the command was advanced, 
and had some degree of advocacy. Some maintained that 
General Ward himself should be regarded as the responsible 
officer of the day in all its operations. Others concluded that 
there was really no commander, in full authority as such, on 
the peninsula of Charlestown. Others still sought to propi- 
tiate the manes of the officers, whose respective champions 
were urging rival claims for them, by dividing the honors of 
the command among two, three, or four chief actors at the 
various points where the critical movements of the day 
occurred. The heroic young patriot, Joseph Warren, who fell 
mortally wounded on leaving the redoubt, had the honor of 
the day assigned to him as chief in authority. But there were 
many who heard his own words, when Prescott offered to him 
the command, that he had not yet received his commission, 
and was on the ground only as a volunteer. And surely there 
is no evidence either that he had been assigned the command 
or that he gave any order in the whole action. 

The ideal picture of " The Battle of Bunker Hill," painted 
in London, by the Connecticut artist. Colonel John Trumbull, 
in 1786, first made Putnam the central figure in the redoubt. 
The Rev. Josiah Whitney, in a sermon at the funeral of General 
Putnam, in 1790, asserted that the detachment sent from Cam- 
bridge was put under his command. Colonel Daniel Putnam, 
son of the General, in a letter written in a most commendable 
spirit, and in a dignified style of statement and argument, and 



20 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

addressed to the officers of the Bunker Hill Monument Asso- 
ciation, in 1825, advocates his father's claims. As a youth of 
fifteen, he says, he was with his father at Cambridge, in the 
camp, and for years after conversed with him freely upon what 
had then transpired. Most sincerely and most naturally the 
son received the impression that his father was in command 
of the expedition. But the careful reading of this letter will 
show that the son's impression was a matter of inference. 
The intrepid ardor of the General to have the enterprise under- 
taken at any risk, and his active movements and constant cir- 
cuits through the day, might prompt that inference, as indicat- 
ing that he regarded himself as virtually charged with the direc- 
tion and oversight of the whole movement. But if so, his 
command was assumed, for it certainly was not assigned to 
him. Prescott received no orders from him. He felt himself 
at liberty to move about at his pleasure, and he left the penin- 
sula for Cambridge at least twice during the day. 

The only decisive authority which the parties to this heated 
and acrimonious controversy would have admitted to be sat- 
isfactory, would have been the production of the official order 
issued by General Ward. This, however, was not extant, or 
not available. Judge Advocate Tudor, who presided at the 
courts-martial instituted by General Washington on his arri- 
val at Cambridge, said that Colonel Prescott appeared to have 
been in command. The contradictory and discordant state- 
ments of those who, having been engaged on the field at dif- 
ferent places and at different hours, were called upon in the 
controversy forty years afterwards to give their depositions as 
to who was the commander-in-chief, are to be accounted for 
by the lapse of time and the effects of age, with, possibly, an 
allowance for their own partialities or prejudices. Besides, 
further and great allowances are to be made on account of 
the confusion in the army, its partially organized and undis- 
ciplined condition above recognized, and the hurried and 
unsystematic character and method of the expedition. 

He who led the detachment and fulfilled the order doubt- 



COMMANDER OF TPIE PROVINCIALS. 21 

less received the order. The order was to intrench and to 
defend the intrenchments. This order was fulfilled by night 
and by day, by the body of men whom Prescott led from 
Cambridge to Charlestown, and by the reinforcements who 
joined the first detachment to co-operate with it. There is no 
evidence that there was during the action any transfer of the 
command by the coming on the ground of an officer of supe- 
rior rank to Prescott, or of any assumption of superior author- 
ity by such an officer. It might have been as dangerous then 
as in the more recent crisis in the nation's fate, — to have done 
what President Lincoln, in his own way, described as " swop- 
ping horses while crossing the river." Neither is there any 
evidence that Prescott received an order during the day from 
any other officer than General Ward. It is certain, and now 
beyond all question, that he had the command of the day and 
the action. In a letter which he wrote from Cambridge to 
John Adams, a little more than two months after the affair, 
he refers, in a most matter-of-fact way, to his having received 
the order to march on the expedition with about i,ooo men, 
and he mentions, in connection with several movements of 
the day, his own directions as commander. As fair and im- 
partial a detail of the action and incidents of the day, as the 
purpose and the means of presenting it will secure, will be 
sufficient to satisfy the desire to set forth the simple truth. 

William Prescott had been a lieutenant in the French war 
at the taking of Cape Breton, While working on his farm at 
Pepperell, he had been chosen by the " minute-men " as their 
colonel. After the affair at Lexington he led his men to 
Cambridge. He was a member of the first Council of War. 
On May 27, being nearly fifty years old, in the full vigor of 
robust manhood, and of unquailing and dauntless courage, he 
was commissioned as colonel of the " Massachusetts Army," * 

* See note at the end. 



22 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



NIGHT WORK. 

The longest days of the year in the latter half of June give 
scarce seven hours for any enterprise that is to be done in 
concealment and darkness. The scene of the work now in 
hand was so near to a watchful enemy that even a loud sound 
might ensure exposure. Colonel Gridley accompanied the 
expedition as chief engineer. Three companies of Bridge's 
regiment did not go ; but as small parties of other regiments 
fell into the detachment, it may have had at the start about 
i,ooo men. They took with them provisions for one day, 
and blankets ; and the promise or expectation was that they 
were to be reinforced in the morning. 

Prescott was ordered to take possession of, to fortify, and to 
defend Bunker's Hill, but to keep the purpose of the expedi- 
tion secret. Nor was this known to the men until they came 
up with the wagons, on Charlestown Neck, laden with the 
intrenching tools. The detachment was drawn up upon Cam- 
bridge Common, in front of the pastor's homestead, which 
General Ward occupied as head-quarters, and prayer was 
offered by the Reverend President of the College, Dr. Lang- 
don, who had himself been a classmate of Samuel Adams. 
The expedition was in motion about nine o'clock, the dark- 
ness just serving. Prescott, with two sergeants carrying 
dark lanterns open in the rear, led the way. Though Pres- 
cott has frequently been represented in accounts and pic- 
tures of the battle as dressed in the working garb of the 
farmer, and appears in Trumbull's ideal painting as wearing a 
slouched hat and bearing a musket, he was in fact arrayed in 
a simple and appropriate military costume, a three-cornered 
hat, a blue coat, with a single row of buttons, lapped and 
faced, and he carried his well-proved sword. This statement 
may be thought a trivial correction, but it sometimes happens 
that important facts depend upon small particulars. As the 
commander was sensitive to the effects of summer heat and 



NIGHT WORK. 23 

expected warm service, he took with him a hneii coat or ban- 
yan, now calloa' a sack, which he wore in the engagement. 

The order designated " Bunker's Hill " as the position to be 
taken. But by i'tiounting it, even to-day, we can ourselves 
see that, cannonadv^l as it might be by shipping in the rivers, 
and annoyed by tU-fences put up by the enemy on Breed's 
Hill, it would have been altogether untenable except in con- 
nection with the latter summit ; while for all purposes of 
restraining and annoying ihe enemy in Boston, Breed's Hill, 
with any reasonable works < )n its top, and its right and left 
declivities, would be a far superior position. It would seem 
that, outside of Charlestown, at least, the Hill on which the 
engagement took place was no v iown by its present distinc- 
tive name till after the war. Ch rlestown Heights, or Bun- 
ker's Hill, was the comprehensive assignation. 

Much time, however, was consumed in deliberation, and the 
natural hesitancy of a bewildered anxiety manifested by those 
who, equally concerned for the success of an enterprise under 
any circumstances fearfully hazardous, differed widely in 
opinion as to the best course to be pursued. This hesitancy, 
which was felt on the way, resulted in a provoking delay of 
action after the detachment had crossed the neck and reached 
the peninsula. It was only after the repeated and urgent 
warnings of the engineer that any further postponement of a 
decision as to the spot where the intrenchments should be 
raised would make the whole enterprise a failure, that it was 
concluded, even then not in accordance with the judgment of 
all the advisers, to construct the works upon Breed's Hill. It 
seems that the compromise, while allowing the occupancy and 
defence of the lower summit to have the priority, carried with 
it a purpose to fortify Bunker's Hill as soon as possible after- 
wards. The deliberation and the delay brought on the mid- 
night hour before the engineer had traced the lines of the 
proposed redoubt, and spades and pickaxes were busily plied 
to raise the protecting shield of loose earth. 

In the account of the engagement afterwards prepared by 



24 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

the Massachusetts Congress, it is said that Breed's Hill was 
occupied and fortified by a mistake. The reason for this 
statement is not apparent to us. Probably -if both summits 
could have been simultaneously intrenched and defended by 
troops well supplied with ammunition and artillery, the pro- 
vincials might have maintained their gr :>und. But by oc- 
cupying Bunker's Hill alone, with s.uch scanty military 
appliances as they had, they could riot have prevented the 
landing nor thwarted the hostile operations of the enemy. 
As the summits are not within n-iusket-shot, and as the Brit- 
ish would certainly have occupi ,J. Breed's Hill, if it had not 
first been secured by the proymcials, our scant ammunition 
and weak artillery would have been of but little avail. 

The relative features of * le two summits have not as yet 
been essentially changed, ,.<cept by the reduction and partial 
grading of the higher one, and the filling in of the quagmire 
between them. Their highest points were about 130 rods 
apart, Bunker's Hill lying a few rods north of a line drawn 
westward from Breed's Hill, which is directly opposite to 
Copp's Hill in Boston with a space of less than a mile, 
including the river, dividing them. A straight road then, 
as now, beginning at the narrowest point of Charlestown 
Neck, ascended and crossed the summit of Bunker's Hill, at 
an elevation, before reduction, of 112 feet, descended to the 
base, and there joined a road that completely encircled the 
base of Breed's Hill, which has a height of about 62 feet. 
One cross-road, now Wood Street, connected this encircling 
road with what is now the Main Street of Charlestown. Back 
of the two summits the land sloped, with occasional irregu- 
larities, down to the Mystic River. An elevated point of 
land, bearing east from Breed's Hill and extending towards 
the bay, and called Morton's or Moulton's Point, swelled into 
a summit 35 feet high, called Morton's Hill. This has now 
been levelled. The bridge to Chelsea starts from this Point. 
Between Breed's Hill and the Point much of the ground was 
sloughy, and several brick yards and kilns were worked there. 



NIGHT WORK. 25 

Breed's Hill was then chiefly used by householders in Charles- 
town for pasturage, and was intersected by many fences. 
Towards Mystic River and the Point some patches at the 
time of the action were covered with tall, waving grass, ripe 
for the scythe, while farther back, on the margin of the river, 
at the base of the two summits, were fine crops of hay, just 
mown, lying on the eve of the battle in winrows and cocks. 
The fences and ti)e tall, unmown grass, which were of great 
advantage to the provincials in their stationary defences, were 
grievous impedimen*.s and annoyances to the British in their 
advances. There w.^e then only two or three houses and 
barns on the south-western slope of Breed's Hill. The edi- 
fices of the town were gathered around the present Square, 
and extended sparsely along i..e Main Street to the Neck. 

The monument occupies the centre of the redoubt, which 
was eight rods square ; the southern side, running parallel 
with the Main Street, was constructed with one projecting 
and two entering angles. On a line with the eastern side, 
which faced the Navy Yard, was a breastwork of nearly 400 
feet in length, running down the hill towards the Mystic. 
The sally-port opened upon the angle between this breast- 
work and the northern side of the redoubt, and was defended 
by a blind. Colonel Gridley planned the works, which ex- 
hibited a combination of military science and Yankee in- 
genuity. No vestige of the redoubt now remains, but a 
portion of the breastwork is distinctly visible. When a 
square was cut around the monument grounds for house-lots, 
more than a quarter of a century since, the remains of the 
works raised by the British after the battle, lying west of the 
monument, which had previously been plain to the eye, all 
disappeared. 

Though the hands which spaded the bulwarks of earth on 
that summit during the night of Friday, June i6th, were used 
to daily toil, and brought to their unwonted midnight task 
the most unflinching courage and determination, it was still a 
work of dreadful anxiety. It was a bright starlight night of 

4 



26 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

midsummer, when the long hours of the day almost deny an 
interval to the darkness, and we expect almost momentarily 
after twilight in the west to behold the gray of morning in 
the east. There was a remnant of a waning moon jvist before 
midnight. A guard was stationed at the shore nearest Boston, 
to anticipate any movement of the enemy. Prcscott himself 
went down there with Brooks, afterwards go^rnor of the 
State, then a major in Bridge's regiment, and h*;ard from the 
sentries relieving guard on the vessels the assuring cry, " All's 
well." After a while, Prescott, thinkm^r it impossible that 
the sentries could be so hard of hearin^;, made another visit 
to the river's brink, and, finding all secure, recalled the guard. 
The work went on, and burdened moments accomplished the 
results of ordinary hours. ThX.re was a scene and an enter- 
prise for the imagination to picture. Even the narrow space 
between the shores was wider than the distance between 
those midnight d> .ers and their enemies. At least five 
armed vessels then floated in the middle of the stream. The 
" Glasgow," on the line of Craigie's, or East Cambridge, Bridge, 
with 24 guns and 130 men, commanded the summit of Bun- 
ker's Hill and the Neck, by which the peninsula commu- 
nicated with Medford and Cambridge. The " Somerset," 
with 68 guns and 520 men, lying near the draw of the present 
easternmost bridge, commanded Charlestown Square and its 
dwellings. The "Lively," with 20 guns and 130 men, lying 
off the present Navy Yard, could throw its shot directly upon 
the redoubt. The " Falcon," sloop of war, lying off Moulton's 
Point, defended the ascent between the landing-places of the 
British and Breed's Hill. The " Cerberus," of 36 guns, main- 
tained a continual fire during the assaults on the provincials. 
These ships were most aptly moored for the purposes of the 
enemy, and it seems almost impossible that the sentries could 
have been wakeful at their posts and not have heard the 
operations of nearly a thousand men upon the Hill and 
near it. 



THE DAWN AND THE CONFLICT. 27 

THE DAWN AND THE CONFLICT. 

The .four hours of darkness after the work of intrenchment 
began a*" last gave place to the beams of early morning. On 
that mon;..ut, when the sun sent forth the first heralds of his 
coming, seems to have been suspended the fate of empires. 
Could the pn^vincials have been favored with a dull and heavy 
fog, like that which afterwards gave them such help in de- 
laying the discovery of their works on Dorchester Heights, 
allowing secret jommunication with Cambridge and more 
secure defences, ihey might possibly have retained their posi- 
tion. How awfully in contrast with the spell of glory which 
poured out over the di .rkened sky and the dew-sprinkled earth 
from the bursting radiance of the sun, was to be the scene on 
which the sun would go do.vn upon that green eminence. 
That scene, where the heavens in their effulgence greeted the 
earth in its loveliness, was to present ;.t evening the most 
shocking horrors of desolation and agony. If true patriotism, 
if wise policy, at least if the love which Christian people 
of the same blood and lineage should bear to each other, had 
been allowed its full, free influence over the parties in the 
approaching struggle, how much misery and fruitless wretch- 
edness might have been averted ! Even then it was not too 
late for simple justice to have ensured peace. The blood shed 
at Concord and Lexington, with the long list of antecedent 
outrages, might have been forgiven by our fathers. They 
had not in any case been the aggressors. They acted only 
on the defensive. The blows which they struck were to ward 
off other blows to follow those already received. There is no 
evidence that the heights of Charlestown were occupied for 
any other purpose than that of defence, to confine the enemy 
to the narrow quarters into which they had intruded, and to 
prevent a repetition of hostile incursions into the country. 

When the morning sun displayed to the astonished invaders 
the character of the last night's labor, and showed them the 
workmen still employed with undismayed hearts and unex- 



28 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

hausted hands, it was not even then too late for peace. ' lage 
and his officers, at least, if their hired subordinates di - not, 
should have honored, though they might not have fear(;d, that 
patriot band ; should have respected the spirit which cr^ntroUed 
them, and have counted the cost of the bloody is. .'ue. But 
not one moment, not one word, perhaps not one thought, was 
spent upon hesitation, intercession, or remonstrance. 

The instant that the first beams of light mp.rkcd distinctly 
the outlines of the daring provincials and or their intrench- 
ments on the Hill, the cannon of the " LivCiy," which floated 
nearest, opened a hot fire upon them, at the ^'ame time arous- 
ing the sleepers in Boston to come !"ortli as spectators or 
actors in the cruel tragedy. The othe^ armed vessels, some 
floating batteries, and that on Copp's Hill, r,200 yards distant, 
combined to pour forth their vo' cys, uttering a startling and 
dismal note of preparation for the day's conflict. But the 
works, though not completed, were in a state of such forward- 
ness that the missiles of destruction fell wellnigh harmless, 
and the intrenchers continued to strengthen their position. 
The earthwork was between six and seven feet high. The 
enemy in Boston could scarcely credit their eyesight. Pres- 
cott, the hero of the day, with whom its proudest fame should 
rest, was undaunted, ardent, and full of a bounding energy. 
He devised and directed ; he encouraged his men ; he mounted 
the works ; and with his bald head uncovered, and his com- 
manding frame, and his simple military insignia, he was a 
noble personification of a patriot cause. Some of the men 
incautiously ventured in front of the works, when one of them 
was instantly killed by a cannon shot. This first victim was 
at once interred, and his companions were warned of what the 
day would bring nearer to them. 

When the orders had been issued at Cambridge the pre- 
vious evening, to those who had thus complied with them, 
refreshments and reinforcements had been promised in the 
morning. Thus some of the weary men, who had not one 
moment for sleep or repose, but had been tasked to the utter- 



PREPARATIONS OF THE ENEMY. 29 

most, might have inferred that they had done their work, 
wer.^ entitled to reHef, and were even at Hberty to depart. 
Some few did leave the Hill, and did not return. Those who 
remained were exhausted with their toil, without food or / 
water, < nd the morning was already intensely hot. Two 
barrels O:' water had been knocked in pieces by a shot from 
one of the vessels. Some of the officers, sympathizing with 
the situatiu T and sufferings of the men, requested Prescott to 
send to Cambridge for relief by another detachment to hold 
the works. He summoned a council of officers, but was him- 
self resoluti c.4'ainst the petition, saying that the enemy would 
not venture ^1 attack, and, if they did venture, would be 
repulsed ; that tn ■; men who had raised the works were best 
able to defend the n, and deserved the honor of a sure victory, 
and that they had ai'-eady learned to despise the fire of the 
enemy. The vehemence of the commander infused new spirit y 
into the men, and thcv resolved to stand the dread issue. 
Prescott ordered a guard to the ferry to resist a landing there. 
He was seen by Gage, who was reconnoitring from Copp's 
Hill, and who asked of Counsellor Willard, at his side, " Who 
is that officer commanding .-• " Willard recognized his own 
brother-in-law, and named Colonel Prescott. " Will he fight .-' " 
asked Gage. The answer was, " Yes, sir, depend upon it, to ^ 
the last drop of blood in him ; but I cannot answer for his 
men." Yet Prescott could answer for his men, and that 
amounted to more than Willard's opinion. 



PREPARATIONS OF THE ENEMY. 

The measures of the enemy were undoubtedly delayed by 
sheer amazement and surprise, on finding that the intrepidity 
of the provincials had anticipated them in an enterprise which 
they had deliberately decided to take upon themselves. In 
the Council of War called by Gage, at the Province House, 
all were unanimous that the enemy must be dislodged ; but 
there were different opinions as to the manner of effecting 



30 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

this object The majority agreed with Generals Clinton and 
Grant in advising that the troops should be embarked at the 
bottom of the Common, in boats, and, under the protection of 
the ships and floating batteries, should land at Charhstovvn, 
and thus hold provincials and intrenchments at thc'r mercy. 
But General Gage overruled the advice, and detern- aed upon 
landing and making an attack in front of the wc ks, fearing 
that his troops, if landed at the Neck in Charlc ., wn, would 
be ruinously entrapped by the intrenchers and t ' •? main forces 
at Cambridge. 

The grounds for this difference of opinion ar ;ong the royal 
officers in council, as to the course to be pursued in an effort 
to dislodge the provincials, were so obvious and natural, that 
they would seem to have been anticipat >d in the camp at 
Cambridge, and to have had their influent 'e there. All through 
the day General Ward was apprehending that a landing might 
be attempted at the Neck, and was f course distracted by 
this apprehension as to the expediency and safety of weaken- 
ing his own force by sending further detachments to the 
peninsula. The armed vessels of the enemy were very active 
during the day in raking the low tongue of land between 
Cambridge and Charlestown, and many who passed between 
the two towns made a long circuit on the ridges bordering 
upon Medford. The enemy did open a brisk cannonade upon 
Roxbury ; and this increased the fears of General Ward, that 
they might divide their forces, and, while assailing the in- 
trenchers in front or rear, rush out upon Cambridge or 
Watertown, where the scanty stores were deposited. These 
facts account for the hesitation of Ward to comply with the 
urgent solicitations brought to him through messengers sent 
frequently through the day from Prescott and Putnam, for 
reinforcements on the peninsula. 

By nine o'clock the bustle and array in Boston, visible from 
the Hill in Charlestown, indicated that preparations were 
making for an attempt to dislodge the provincials. Prescott 
therefore abandoned his first confident opinion that he would 



PREPARATIONS OF THE ENEMY. 3 1 

not be assailed, and comforted himself and his men with the 
assurance of immunity and of a glorious victory. He sent 
Major Brooks to General Ward to urge the necessity of his 
being reinforced by men and supplies. As Captain Gridley 
would not risk one of his artillery horses on the road, raked 
by gunboats and by the " Glasgow " frigate, Brooks had to go 
on foot, : Ad he reached head-quarters, where the Committee 
of Safet / was then in session, at about ten o'clock. Brooks's 
urgenc}, seconded by the solicitations of Richard Devens, a 
member of the committee and a citizen of Charlestown, in- 
duced Ward to order that Colonels Reed and Stark, then at 
Medford, sL add reinforce Prescott with the New Hampshire 
troops. The companies at Chelsea were then recalled, and 
the order reacl.cd Medford at eleven o'clock. The men were 
as speedily as possible provided with ammunition, though 
much time was con^vmed in the preparation. Each received 
two flints, a gill of powder, and lead for fifteen balls. They 
had no cartridge boxes, and used horns, pouches, or their 
pockets as substitutes. The lead organ-pipes of the English 
Church in Cambridge were made serviceable for slugs, beaten 
by the men into size and shape to suit the different calibre of 
their guns. 

.-General Putnam, burning with zeal and intrepidity, was 
coursing through the whole day over nearly all of the con- 
tested field. He is said to have visited the redoubt in the 
night or in the early morning. He was mounted ; and so 
narrators, who were in or near the action, when questioned 
at the time, or long afterwards, testified to seeing him in so 
many places that he would appear to have been wellnigh 
ubiquitous. 

Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the most distinguished and self- 
sacrificing of the many patriots of the time, had not yet 
accepted the commission already mentioned as offered him 
on the 14th of June. He had twice maintained the cause of 
his country, in the very teeth of British officers, on the annual 
commemoration of the 5 th of March. When the report of the 



32 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

coming action reached him at Watertown, where he then v:as, 
as acting president of the Provincial Congress and Chairman 
of the Committee of Safety, though he was suffering from 
ilhiess and exhaustion, he resolved to join in the strife. 
Wholly inexperienced as he was in military tactics, hi.-; deter- 
mination could not be shaken by the earnest remon.- trances of 
his friends. His presence and counsel were need.^ 1 in the 
Committee, but he persisted in his resolve. We must lament, 
as all his contemporaries lamented, that his heroism outran 
his prudence, and would not be restrained by dut} in another 
direction. 



EMBARKATION AND LANDING OF THL ENEMY. 

From their slightly fortified Hill the provinLials could watch 
and mark the hostile movements and j reparations of the 
British. General Howe was put in co. iiriand of their detach- 
ment. The following extracts from his Orderly Book will 
vividly reproduce a part of the arrangements : — 

"General Morning Orders. 

Saturday, June 17, 1775. 

The companies of the 35th and 49th that are arrived, to land as 
soon as the transports can get to the wharf, and to encamp on the 
ground marked out for them on the Common. 

Captain Handfield is appointed to act as assistant to the deputy- 
quartermaster-general, and is to be obeyed as such. 

The ten eldest companies of Grenadiers, and the ten eldest com- 
panies of Light Infantry (exclusive of those of the regiments lately 
landed), the 5th and 38th Regiments, to parade at half after eleven 
o'clock, with their arms, ammunition, blankets, and the provisions 
ordered to be cooked this morning. They will march by files to 
the Long Wharf. 

The 43d and 52d Regiments, with the remaining companies of 
Light Infantry and Grenadiers, to parade at the same time, with 
the same directions, and march to the North Battery. The 47th 
Regiment and ist Battalion of Marines will also march, as above 
directed, to the North Battery, after the rest are embarked, and be 
ready to embark there when ordered. 



EMBARKATION AND LANDING OF THE ENEMY. 22 

The rest of the troops will be kept in readiness to embark at a 
^noment's warning. 

One subaltern, one sergeant, one corporal, one drummer, and 
twenty privates to be left by each corps for the security of their 
respective encampments. 

'Vny man who shall quit his rank on any pretence, or shall dare 
to p'under or pillage, will be executed without mercy. 

T\\e Pioneers of the Army to parade immediately and march to 
th<" South Battery, where they will obey such orders as they will 
r ceive from Lieutenant-Colonel Cleveland. 

The Light Dragoons, mounted, to be sent immediately to the lines, 
where they will attend and obey the orders of the officer command- 
ing there. 

Two more to be sent in like manner to head-quarters. 

Signals for the boats in divisions, moving to the attack on the 
rebels intrenched on the heights of Charlestown : Blue Flag to 
advance ; Yellow, to lay on oars ; Red, to land." 

At noon, when it w^ould seem that the provincials ceased to 
work on the redoubt, twenty-eight barges, formed in two 
parallel lines, left the end of Long Wharf, and made for Moul- 
ton's Point, the most feasible and best protected landing- 
place. The barges were crowded with British troops of the 
5th, 38th, 43d, and 5 2d battalions of infantry, two companies 
of grenadiers, and ten of light-infantry. These troops were 
all splendidly appointed, with glittering firelocks and bay- 
onets, but sadly encumbered for the hot work before them and 
the hot sun over them, by their arms and ammunition ; and it 
would seem by the statement of their own historian, Sted- 
man, that they carried a hundred pounds of provision, 
intended to last for three days. Their regular and uniform 
appearance, with six pieces of ordnance shining in the bows of 
the leading barges, presented an imposing and alarming spec- 
tacle to our raw soldiery. Some of the regulars that had 
lately arrived had been retained on board of the transports, 
on account of the crowded state of Boston. A portion of 
these were landed for the first time at Charlestown, and the 
first spot of American soil upon which many of them trod 
gave them their graves. 

5 



34 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

The officers were all men of experience and valor. Gen- 
erals Howe and Pigot, Colonels Nesbit, Abercrombie, anrl 
Clarke, Majors Butler, Williams, Bruce, Spendlove, Sme;t, 
Mitchell, Pitcairn, Short, Small, and Lord Rawdon, were t.ie 
most distinguished. Captain Addison, allied to the auth. :r of 
the "Spectator," had arrived in Boston on the day precc'ing 
the battle, and had then received an invitation to dine vith 
General Burgoyne on the 17th, when a far different >.;■; e- 
rience awaited him, for he was numbered among the slaii'. 

This detachment landed at Moulton's Point about one o'clock, 
defended by the shipping and wholly unmolested. Thev soon 
discovered an egregious and provoking act of carelessness on 
the part of their Master of Ordnance, in sending over cannon- 
^ balls too large for the pieces. These were at once returned 
to Boston, and were not replaced in season for the first action. 
At the same time General Howe, the commander of the 
detachment, requested of General Gage a reinforcement, 
which he judged to be requisite the moment that he had a 
fair view of the elevated and formidable position of the pro- 
vincials, as seen from the Point. 

While these messages were passing, some of the British 
soldiers, stretched at their ease upon the grass, ate in peace 
their last meal, refreshing their thirst from large tubs of 
invigorating drinks, — a tantalizing sight to the hungry and 
thirsty provincials. About two o'clock the reinforcement 
landed at Madlin's ship-yard, about the middle of the present 
Navy Yard water-front. It consisted of the 47th battalion of 
infantry, a battalion of marines, and some more companies of 
grenadiers and light-infantry. The whole number of the 
British troops who were engaged in the course of the action 
did not fall short of, and perhaps exceeded, 5,000. In con- 
nection with this force, so far exceeding that of the provin- 
cials in numbers, and so immeasurably superior in discipline 
and military appointments, we are to consider the marines 
in the ships which cannonaded three points of the Hill, and 
the six-gun battery on Copp's Hill, as engaging in the unequal 



A PROVINCIAL OUTWORK. 35 

contest Contrasting a British regular with a provincial sol- 
dier, we are accustomed to ascribe immense advantages of 
discipline to the former. Yet we are to remember that an 
overpowering superiority of character and of cause was on 
the side of the latter. If we could have followed a recruiting 
sergeant of Great Britain at that time, as he hunted out from 
dram-shops and the haunts of idleness and vice the low and 
depraved inebriate, the lawless and dissolute spendthrift, 
seeing how well the sergeant knew where to look for his 
recruits, we should have known how much discipline could do 
for them, and how much it must leave undone. The provin- 
cials were not acquainted with the terms and forms of military 
tactics. But they knew the difference between half-cock and 
double-cock ; and the more they hated the vermin which they 
had been wont to hunt with their fowling-pieces, the straighter 
did the bullet speed from the muzzle. But their superiority 
consisted in the kind of pay which engaged them in their 
ranks, not in pounds and shillings, but in a free land, a happy 
home, laws of their own making, and rulers of their own 
choice. 

A PROVINCIAL OUTWORK. 

While the British troops were forming their lines, a slight 
work was constructed, principally by the Connecticut troops, 
sent by Prescott from the redoubt, under Captain Knowlton, 
which proved of essential service to the provincials. A 
double rail-fence, under a small part of which a stone-wall 
was piled to the height of about two feet, ran from the road 
which crossed the level between Bunker's and Breed's Hills, 
towards the shore of the Mystic, with a few apple-trees on 
each side of it. The provincials pulled up some other fence 
material near by, and set it in a line parallel with this, filling 
the space between with the fresh-mown hay on the ground. 
The length of this slight defence was about 700 feet. It was 
about 600 feet in rear of the redoubt and breastwork, and, 
had it been on a line with them, would have left a space of 



36 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

about 100 feet between the ends of the earthen and the 
wooden and hay defences. Thus there was an opening of 
about 700 feet on the slope of the hill between the intrench- 
ments and the rail-fence, which the provincials had not time 
to secure. Part of this intervening space was sloughy ; and 
as there were no means of defending it, save a few scattered 
trees, the troops behind the breastwork, as we shall soon see, 
were exposed to a galling fire from the enemy, on the third 
assault, which largely contributed to the unfavorable result of 
the conflict. The six pieces of British artillery were stationed 
at first upon Moulton's Hill. 

THE SUSPENSE. 

All these preparations, visible as they were to thousands 
of persons from hill-top, steeples, and roofs, were watched 
with the intensest anxiety. The common persuasion and 
apprehension were that General Gage would himself lead a 
portion, if not the whole, of the residue of his army, in an 
attack upon some other point in the semicircle. The heavy 
cannonading of Roxbury was designed to detain the forces 
there, so that they should not be of service for Charlestown. 
A schooner, with 500 or 600 men, was directed to the Cam- 
bridge shore, but wind and tide proved unfavorable. In fear 
of these movements, great caution was necessary in the at- 
tempt to send reinforcements to Breed's Hill. Captain 
Callender was ordered there with his artillery. Gardiner's, 
Patterson's, and Doolittle's regiments were stationed at differ- 
ent points between Charlestown Neck and Cambridge. This 
Neck, though frequently crossed by our officers and men in 
single file, was fearfully hazardous during the whole day, as 
it was raked by a fire of round, bar, and chain shot from the 
" Glasgow " and two gondolas near the shore. Some rein- 
forcements arrived from Medford before the engagement, 
though General Stark had led them very moderately, insist- 
ing that " one fresh man in battle is worth ten fatigued ones." 
General Putnam stopped a part of them to unite with a de- 



THE SUSPENSE. 37 

tacbment from the redoubt in attempting to fortify Bunker's 
Hill, which was of supreme consequence to the provincials if 
they should be driven from Breed's Hill. Stark, with oaths 
and encouragements, led on the remainder to the rail-fence. 
It does not appear that tnuch if any relief was sent during the 
day in food or drink to the overtasked force in the redoubt. 

It soon became a matter of urgency to the provincials to 
seek the utmost possible help from their artillery. But it 
amounted to very little. A few ineffectual shots had been 
fired from Gridley's pieces on the redoubt, against Copp's 
Hill and the shipping, when the pieces were removed and 
planted with Captain Callender's, in the unprotected space 
between the fence and the breastwork. Here they would 
have been of some service in defending our weakest and most 
exposed point. But the officers and the companies who had 
them in charge were wholly unskilled in their management ; 
and, on the plea of having unsuitable cartridges, Callender was 
drawing off the pieces to prepare ammunition, when Putnam 
urged him to restore them to their position. They were fired 
a few times, and soon afterwards were moved by Captain 
Ford to the rail-fence. 

General Pomeroy, at Cambridge, old as he was, was stirred 
like the war-horse at the smell of the battle. He begged a 
horse of General Ward, that he might ride to Charlestown ; 
but, on reaching the Neck, and observing the hot fire which 
raked it, he was afraid to risk the borrowed animal. Giving 
him then in charge to a sentry, he walked on to the rail-fence, 
where his well-known form and countenance called forth en- 
thusiastic shouts. Colonel Little came up with his regiment, 
and the men were stationed along the line, from the rail-fence 
to a cart-way on the left. There were also reinforcements of 
about 300 troops each from Brewer's, Nixon's, Woodbridge's, 
and Doolittle's regiments, detachments of which were sta- 
tioned along the Main Street, in Charlestown. Colonel 
Scammans, who was deprived of sense and courage, either by 
confusion or fear, had been ordered by Ward to go where the 



38 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

fighting was. He went to Lechmere's Point, East Cam- 
bridge, understanding, as he said, that the enemy were land- 
ing there. He was advised to go to the Hill. He chose to 
understand the nearest hill, and so he posted himself on Cob- 
ble Hill, where now stand the Appleton Wards of the Mc- 
Lean Asylum, and occupied that useless position. General 
Warren arrived just before the action. Putnam endeavored 
to dissuade him from entering it ; but Warren could not be 
thus wrought upon. He said he came only as a volunteer, 
and instead of seeking a place of safety, wished to know 
where the onset would be most furious. Putnam pointed to 
the redoubt as the critical place. Prescott there offered to 
receive Warren's orders ; but he repeated that he was happy 
to serve as a volunteer. 

The tune of " Yankee Doodle," which afforded the British 
so much sport as ridiculing the provincials, was the tune by 
which our fathers were led on to the contest. Let their ex- 
ample commend to us this only way of depriving ridicule of 
its sting, for there is nothing which it so much annoys men 
to spend in vain as their scorn. 

Before the engagement began. Captain Walker, of Chelms- 
ford, led a band of about fifty resolute men down into Charles- 
town to annoy the enemy's left flank. They did great 
execution, and then abandoned their dangerous position, to 
attack the right flank on Mystic River. Here the Captain 
was wounded and taken prisoner. He died of his wounds in 
Boston jail. 

THE FIRST ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 

The British, in their attack, aimed at two distinct objects : 
first, to force and carry the redoubt ; second, to turn the left 
flank of the provincials, and to cut off their retreat. To ac- 
complish the former. General Pigot, who commanded the 
British left wing, displayed under cover of the eastern slope 
of the Hill, and advanced against the redoubt and breastwork. 



THE FIRST ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 39 

General Howe led the right wing, which advanced, angularly, 
along the shore of the Mystic toward the rail-fence. The 
artillery prepared the way for the infantry ; and it was at this 
time that the blunder of the oversized balls was a great griev- 
ance to the enemy, as they had but a few rounds of proper 
shot. 

It was of vital necessity that every charge of powder and 
ball spent by the Americans should take effect. There was 
none for waste. Some of the very last charges fired by them 
on that day had been snatched from the cartridge-boxes of 
their dead or wounded foes by a few venturesome individuals 
who had got out of the precious article. The provincial offi- 
cers commanded their men to withhold their fire till the enemy 
were within eight rods, and, when they could see the whites 
of their eyes, to aim at their waist-bands ; also, " to aim at 
the handsome coats, and pick off the commanders." As the 
British left wing came within gunshot, the men in the redoubt 
could scarcely restrain their fire, and a few discharged their 
pieces. Prescott, indignant at this disobedience, vowed instant 
death to any one who should repeat it, and promised, by the 
confidence which they reposed in him, to give the command 
at the proper moment. His lieutenant-colonel, Robinson, 
ran round the top of the works and knocked up the levelled 
muskets. When the space between the redoubt and the 
assailants was narrowed to the appointed span, the word was 
spoken at the moment. The deadly flashes burst forth, and 
the green grass was crimsoned by the life-blood of hundreds. 
The front rank of the assailants was nearly obliterated, as 
were its successive substitutes, as the Americans were well 
protected, and had been so deliberate in their aim. The 
enemy fell like the tall grass before the practised sweep of 
the mower. General Pigot was obliged to give the word for 
a retreat. Some of the wounded were seen crawling with the 
last energies of life from the gory heap of the dying and the 
dead, among whom the officers, in their proportion, largely 
outnumbered the privates. As the wind rolled away the suffo- 



40 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

eating smoke, and the blasts of artillery and musketry for a 
few minutes ceased, the awful spectacle, the agonizing yells 
and shrieks of the sufferers, were distracting and piercing. 
The insanity of war never had a more full demonstration than 
in that scene, when a corps of mercenaries that had crossed 
the ocean in the service of a foreign despotism, with as little 
intelligence as beasts, and with no conscience whatever, were 
pitting themselves in vain efforts to wrest from men the heri- 
tage of country and freedom to which they were born, or which 
they had made their own by the desert of earning it and 
knowing how to improve it. Prayers and groans, foul, impi- 
ous oaths, and fond invocations of the loved and dear, were 
mingled into sounds, which seemed scarcely of human utter- 
ance, by the rapturous shouts of a vengeful joy which rang 
from the redoubt. This earth has not a sight nor a sound 
more maddening in its passion or its woe than that which 
only a battle-field yields to soldier or to man. Hell then 
gushes forth from its prison in the bowels of the earth and 
the dark passions of the breast, and covers the fair surface 
of the ground with the flames and yells of demoniac strife. 

While such was the temporary fortune of the field near the 
redoubt. General Howe, with the right wing, made for the 
rail-fence, where Putnam, assisted by Captain Ford's company, 
had posted the artillery with promise of advantage. Here, as 
at the redoubt, some of the provincials had been tempted to 
discharge their muskets while the advancing enemy paused 
to destroy a fence which obstructed their progress. Putnam, 
with an oath, threatened to cut down with his sword the next 
offender who dared to risk the waste of another musket-charge. 
The word was given when the enemy were within eight rods. 
The artillery had already made a lane through the advancing 
column, and now the fowling-pieces mowed down their vic- 
tims, especially the officers, with fatal celerity. The strong 
lungs of Major McClary raised the voice of encouragement 
above the roar of the cannon. The assailants were compelled 
to retreat, leaving behind them heaps of the fallen ; while some 



THE SECOND ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 41 

of the flying even rushed to their boats, as if for the security 
of another element. The British artillery had been sloughed 
among the brick-kilns, besides lacking proper shot, and so 
could do but little. The regulars did not take aim, and thus 
their discharge passed high above the heads of the provincials. 
The trees around were afterwards observed with their trunks 
unscathed, while their branches had been riddled by bullets. 
The passionate shout of victory echoed from the fence to that 
from the redoubt, and even the coward was nerved to daring. 
Now it was that our troops and our cause suffered from the 
want of discipline, and from the confusion apparent in the 
whole management of the action, originating in the extem- 
porized and imperfect preparation, and in the baffling secrecy 
of the purposes of the enemy. The neck of land, ploughed 
by the incessant volleys from the ships, and clouded by the 
dust thus raised, was an almost insuperable barrier to the 
bringing on of reinforcements. Major Gridley, wholly lack- 
ing in spirit and skill, had been put in command of a battalion 
of infantry, in compliment to his father. He lost, and could 
not recover, his self-possession and courage. Though ordered 
to the Hill, he advanced towards Charlestown, slowly and 
timidly ; and, though urged by Colonel Frye to hasten, he 
was satisfied with the scant service of firing 3-pounders from 
Cobble Hill upon the " Glasgow " frigate. His captain, Trevett, 
refused obedience to such weakness, and ordered his men to 
follow him to the works. Colonel Gerrish, with his artillery 
on Bunker's Hill, could neither be urged nor intimidated by 
Putnam to bring his pieces to the rail-fence. He was un- 
wieldy by corpulence, and overcome with heat and fatigue. 
His men had been scattered from the summit of Bunker's 
Hill, where the enemy's shot had taken tremendous effect, as 
it was supposed to be strongly fortified. 

THE SECOND ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 

The enemy rallied for a second attack. Though they had 
sorely suffered, and some few of the officers were reluctant to 



42 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

renew the fatal effort, the large body, like the General, would 
have yielded to death in any form of horror before they would 
have allowed a return to be carried to England that they 
had given up the contested field to those whom they had 
always described as cowards. At this crisis 400 fresh men 
came over from Boston to repair the British loss, and Dr. 
Jeffries, of Boston, accompanied them as surgeon. The regu- 
lars, a second time, steadily advanced, and, with the stoic 
apathy induced by a battle-field, they even piled up the bodies 
of their slaughtered comrades as breastworks for their own 
protection. Their artillery was now drawn up by the road 
which divided the tongue of land on the Mystic from the 
Hill, to within 900 feet of the rail-fence. The object was 
to bring it on a line with the redoubt, and to open a way for 
the infantry. It was during this second assault that Charles- 
town was set on fire. Probably a double purpose was intended 
in this act : first, that the smoke might cover the advance of 
the enemy ; and second, to dislodge some of the provincials, 
who, from the shelter of the houses, had annoyed the British 
left wing. General Howe sent over to Burgoyne and Clinton 
the order to fire the town ; and the order was fulfilled by car- 
casses thrown from Copp's Hill, which, aided by some marines 
who landed from the " Somerset," completed the work of deso- 
lation. The fall of the meeting-house spire made a transient 
spectacle. The old sites, where the first settlers reared their 
common block-house for their worship, their stores, and their 
defence, on the old town hill, over 200 dwellings, among them 
that of the founder of the wilderness College, and the library 
of Dr. Mather, shared in the ruin. 

The provincials were prepared, at least in heart and pluck, 
for the renewed attack. They had orders to reserve their fire 
till the enemy were within six rods, and then to take deadly 
aim. As before, the shot of the enemy was mostly ineffectual, 
ranging far above the heads of the provincials. Still, some 
of our privates fell, and Colonels Brewer, Nixon, and Buck- 
minster, and Major Moore, were wounded, the last mortally, 



THE SECOND ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 43 

crying out in his death-thirst for water, which could not be 
obtained nearer than the Neck, whither two of his men went 
to seek it. The British stood for a time, the moments of 
which were hours, the deadly discharge which was poured 
upon them as they passed the measured line, while whole 
ranks, officers and men, fell in heaps. General Howe stood 
in the thickest of the fight, wrought up to a desperate deter- 
mination. For a time he was almost alone, his aids-de-camp, 
and many other officers of his staff, lying wounded or dead. 
But though he would not lead a second retreat, he was com- 
pelled to follow it, and to hear the renewed shout of victory 
from the patriot band who had weighed the choice between 
death and subjection. Thus the British were twice fairly and 
completely driven from the Hill. There were at the time 
candid and generous men in their army on the spot, and 
others who from Boston were watching with their glasses 
every incident of the action, who made the deserved acknowl- 
edgment to the prowess of the provincials, in admitting the 
repeated repulse of the assailants. Men of the same mag- 
nanimity in England, after possessing themselves of the facts 
as thoroughly as possible from the information transmitted, 
and from interviews with mutilated victims of the engage- 
ment, also paid the same tribute to the defenders of their 
native soil. But these concessions of candor to the demands 
of truth were exceptional. The transition was too violent 
from what had been the estimate and report of the courage and 
military efficiency of the provincials, to a readiness to admit, 
unreduced and uncolored, the actual incidents of the day. 
Contemporary and even more recent English histories give 
wholly inadequate representations. Even Burke — if, as is 
probable, he wrote the account in the " Annual Register " — 
recognizes only one repulse, and this only in allowing that the 
regulars " were thrown into some disorder." 



44 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



THE THIRD ASSAULT, AND ITS SUCCESS. 

But now the fortunes of the day were to be reversed, so 
far, and so far only, as to attach the bare name of victory to 
the side of the assailants, and to give them the possession of 
a field which would have been scarce too large for the burial 
of their fallen comrades. The provincials encouraged them- 
selves with the hope that the two repulses which had com- 
pelled the regulars to retire with such loss would deter them 
from a renewed attack. At least, it seemed as if there might 
be such a protraction of the issue as would allow of recupera- 
tion and reinforcement of the men and the works on the Hill. 
It came to the knowledge of the provincials that some of the 
British officers did remonstrate against leading their men to 
another butchery, but their remonstrance was disdainfully 
repelled by others. During the second assault, a provincial, 
with incautious loudness of speech, had declared that the 
ammunition was exhausted, and he had been overheard by 
some of the regulars. General Clinton, who from Copp's 
Hill had witnessed the two repulses of His Majesty's troops 
with burning mortification, took a boat and crossed the 
Charles as a volunteer, bringing with him added reinforce- 
ments. A new method of attack was now determined upon. 
General Howe having discovered that weak point, the space 
between the breastwork and the rail-fence, now led the left 
wing, and resolved to apply the main strength of the assault 
against the redoubt and the breastwork, particularly to rake 
the latter with the artillery from the left, while he disguised 
this purpose by a feigned show of force at the rail-fence. 

The regulars now divested themselves of their heavy knap- 
sacks, some of them even of their coats. They were ordered 
to stand the fire of the provincials, and then to make a reso- 
lute charge at the point of the bayonet. The three facts last 
mentioned, viz., the knowledge by the enemy that the pro- 
vincials had spent their ammunition, the encouragement of 



THE THIRD ASSAULT, AND ITS SUCCESS. 45 

the presence of General Clinton, and the discovery of the 
weak point in the defences, all contributed to nerve the 
British to a third effort. 

While these hostile preparations were in progress, the little 
band of devoted patriots, — Prescott afterwards said that less 
than 200 men were left in the redoubt, — exhausted almost to 
complete prostration by their long and unrefreshed toil of the 
night and the bloody work of the noonday, had time to sum- 
mon their remaining energies, to resolve that the last blow 
should be the heaviest, to think upon the glory of their cause, 
and the laurels they should for ever wear. The few remaining 
rounds of powder were distributed by Prescott himself. The 
very few and favored men whose muskets were furnished with 
bayonets — and there were not fifty of them — stood ready to 
repel the charge to the utmost ; and those who were without 
this defence, as well as without ammunition, resolved to club 
their muskets and wield their heavy stocks, while the ferocity 
of despair strung every nerve. Even the loose stones of the 
intrcnchments were gladly secured as the last stay of an 
unflinching resolution. 

A body of reinforcements, fresh and resolute, and provided 
with bayonets, might even then have forced the regulars to a 
third and final retreat ; but, as before remarked, unavoidable 
confusion prevailed in the A)merican camp. The Neck of 
land, the only line of comn^inication, wore a terrible aspect 
to raw recruits, who had ty dodge the missiles as they passed 
over it, and could at be^ transport only their own bodies. 
General Ward was without staff -officers to convey orders. The 
regiments which had been stationed along the route, to wait 
further commands, were overlooked. Colonel Gardiner, though 
thus left without orders, panting to join the strife, led 300 
men to Bunker's Hill, where Putnam first set them upon 
intrenching, but soon urged them to action at the lines. The 
Colonel commanded his men to drop their tools and follow, 
He was leading them to the post of dangerous service when 
he received a mortal wound in the groin from a musket-ball. 



46 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREEDS] HILL. 

As he was borne off the field, he bade his men to conquer or 
die. Deprived of their leader, but few of them engaged in 
the action. His son, a youth of nineteen, met him as he was 
carried by, and, overcome with grief, sought to aid him, but the 
father commanded him to march to his duty. Colonel Scam- 
mans remained on Cobble Hill, but a detachment of Gerrish's 
regiment, under their Danish adjutant, Ferbiger, rushed tow- 
ard the fence. A few of the Americans occupied the two 
or three houses on the slope of Breed's Hill, and annoyed, for 
a time, the left flank of the enemy. 

The artillery of the British effected its murderous purpose, 
raking the whole interior of the breastwork, driving its de- 
fenders into the redoubt, sending the balls there after them 
through the open sally-port, and reducing the area of the con- 
flict. Lieutenant Prescott, a nephew of the commander, had 
his arm disabled, and was told by his uncle to content himself 
with encouraging his men. But, having succeeded in loading 
his musket, he was passing the sally-port to seek a rest from 
which to fire it, when he was killed by a cannon-ball. It was 
clear that the intrenchments could no longer be held ; but the 
resolution to yield them only in the convulsion of a last effort 
nerved every patriot arm. 

The British officers were seen to goad on some of their 
reluctant and shrinking men with blows from their swords. 
It was for them now to receive the fire, and to reserve their 
own till they could follow it by a thrust of the bayonet. Each 
shot of the provincials was true to its aim. Colonel Aber- 
crombie. Majors Williams and Spendlove fell. General Howe 
was slightly wounded in the foot. Hand to hand and face to 
face were exchanged the last savage hostilities of that day. 
Only a ridge of loose-heaped earth divided the grappling com- 
batants, whose feet were slipping in the gory sand, while they 
joined in the mortal strife. When the enemy found them- 
selves received with stones, the missiles of a more ancient 
warfare, they knew that their work was nearly done, as they 
now contended with unarmed men. Young Richardson, of 



THE THIRD ASSAULT, AND ITS SUCCESS. 47 

the Royal Irish, was the first who scaled the parapet, and he 
fell, as did likewise the first line of those that mounted it, 
among whom Major Pitcairn, who had shed the first blood at 
Lexington, was shot by a negro soldier. It was only when 
the redoubt was crowded by the enemy and the defenders in 
one promiscuous throng, and fresh assailants were on all sides 
pouring into it, that Prescott, no less, but even more, a hero, 
when he spoke the reluctant word, ordered a retreat. A 
longer struggle would have been folly, not courage. Some of 
the men had splintered their musket-stocks in fierce blows ; 
nearly all were defenceless, yet was there that left within 
them, in a dauntless soul, which might still help their country 
at its need. The few exceptional cases of cowardice or weak- 
ness, which presented themselves as the catastrophe closed, 
demand no apology, no mention even, when no one could 
merit the epithet of craven who had stood as more than an 
onlooker through that day. 

Prescott gave the crowning proof of his devoted and mag- 
nanimous spirit, when he cooled the heat of his own brain, 
and bore the bitter pang in his own heart, by commanding an 
orderly and still resisting retreat. He was the hero of that 
blood-dyed summit, the midnight leader and guard, the 
morning sentinel, the orator of the opening strife, the cool 
and deliberate overseer of the whole struggle, the well-skilled 
marksman of the exact distance and the point of aim at which 
a shot was certain death ; he was the trusted chief in whose 
bright eye and steady nerve men read their duty ; and when 
conduct, skill, and courage could do no more, he was the 
merciful deliverer of the remnant. Prescott was the hero of 
the day, and wherever its tale is told, let him be its chieftain. 
Whose statue other than his should grace the monumental 
summit beside, not beneath, that of Warren, the "Volunteer" ? 

The troops still left in the redoubt now fought their strag- 
gling escape through the encircling enemy, turning their faces 
towards the foe, while they retreated with backward steps. 
Gridley, who had planned and defended the works, received a 



48 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

wound, and was borne off. Warren was among the last to 
leave the redoubt, and at a short distance from it a musket- 
ball through his head killed him instantly. When the corpse 
of that illustrious patriot was afterwards identified by Dr. 
Jeffries, General Howe thought that this one victim well 
repaid the loss of numbers of his mercenaries. It appears 
from the recently published memoir of Dr. John Warren, 
the brother of the General, and then a young physician at 
Salem, that it was several days before he was certified of the 
sad affliction to himself. He came to Cambridge the next 
morning, and learned only that his brother was missing. In 
endeavoring to pass a sentinel at the new British lines, he 
received from the thrust of his bayonet a wound which he 
bore through life. 

It is not strange that, both in English and American reports 
and hasty narratives of that day, and in some subsequent 
notices of it, Warren should have been represented as the 
commander of the provincial forces. His influence and his 
patriotism were equally well known to friend and foe. There 
is no more delicate task than that of dividing among many 
heroes the honors of a battle-field, and the rewards which fame 
apportions for devoted services. Yet the high-minded Avill 
always appreciate the integrity of the motive which seeks 
to distinguish between the places and the modes of service, 
where those who alike love their country enjoy, at their own 
peril, the opportunity of winning the laurels of heroism and 
devotion. The council chamber and the forum and the high 
place in the public assembly offer to the patriot statesman the 
scenes and occasions for securing remembrance and honor for 
his name. The battle-field must retain the same appropriate 
privilege for the patriot soldier, whose skill and tactics, courage 
and inspiring fervor, can plan and guide a critical enterprise, 
for there alone can he earn his own wreath. Let the chivalry 
and the magnanimity of Warren for ever fill a brilliant page in 
our revolutionary history. But let not a partial homage attach 
to him the especial honor to which another has a rightful 



THE THIRD ASSAULT, AND ITS SUCCESS. 49 

claim. It was no part of his pure purpose, in mingling with 
his countrymen on that hill, to monopolize its honors, and to 
figure as its hero. It is enough that he stood among equals, 
without selfish rivalry, in devotion and patriotism. Let it be 
remembered that he did not approve the measure of thus 
challenging a superior enemy with such insufficient prepara- 
tion and means. The more honorable, therefore, was his self- 
sacrifice in giving the whole energy of his will to falsify the 
misgivings of his judgment. Here, then, is his claim, which, 
when fully met, leaves the honors of that summit to the mili- 
tary leader of the heroic band. 

While such was the issue at the redoubt, the left wing, 
under Putnam, aided by some reinforcements which had 
arrived too late, was making a vigorous stand at the rail- 
fence. But the retreat at the redoubt compelled the res- 
olute defenders to yield with slow and reluctant baitings, as 
their flank was opened to the enemy, Putnam pleaded and 
cursed, — a misuse of emphasis for which he afterwards hum- 
bled himself before his puritan church, — he commanded and 
implored the scattering bands to rally, and he vowed that he 
would win them the victory. His great and absorbing pur- 
pose through the whole day was to fortify Bunker's Plill. It is 
doubtful whether he was at all in the redoubt during the action, 
though the painter Trumbull, perhaps from Connecticut parti- 
ality, drew him as the commander there. To effect his object, 
he passed and repassed between Cambridge and Charlestown, 
sending for tools to the redoubt, and endeavoring to rally the 
flying, even when there was no longer a hope. So completely 
was he identified with the consuming zeal for fortifying the 
higher hill in the rear, that the traditionary rehearsals from 
the lips of some survivors represented him as on horseback, 
buried under and surrounded by heaps of intrenching tools, 
enough for a cart load. His furious ardor may, or may not, 
have needed the control of a cool, deliberating judgment, and 
of that prime essential of the soldier which is called "conduct." 
His courage was unquestionable. He is here fairly presented 

7 



50 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

by the writer, according as a careful examination of author- 
ities, and a review of widely different estimates and judgments 
of him by others, assign to him his share in inspiriting a 
patriotic enterprise. 

General Pomeroy likewise implored the disintegrated forces 
to rally ; but in vain. The last resistance at the rail-fence 
was of the utmost service, as it prevented the enemy from 
cutting off the retreat of the provincials who straggled back, 
each, for the most part, his own leader, towards Cambridge. 
Yet the enemy were in no condition to pursue, as they were 
alike exhausted, and were content with the little patch of 
ground which they had so dearly purchased. The provincials 
retreated to Cambridge by the marsh road, and by the higher 
route over Winter Hill, able to rescue only one of the six pieces 
of artillery which they had brought to the field. The battle 
had occupied about two hours, the provincials retreating about 
five o'clock. The British lay on their arms all night at Bun- 
ker's Hill, discharging their pieces against the Americans, who 
were safely encamped upon Prospect Hill, at the distance of a 
mile. Between the two positions, at the right, was a slight 
elevation, known as Ploughed Hill, because under cultivation. 
This was afterwards called Mount Benedict, as the site of the 
Ursuline Convent, and has a humiliating history. Ploughed 
Hill and Prospect Hill are now both reducing their summits 
to raise the adjacent low lands. 

Prescott, with garments pierced and rent, hastened to head- 
quarters to make return of the orders he had received. He 
was indignant at the loss of the ground, and implored General 
Ward to commit to him three fresh regiments, promising that 
with them he would at once win back what had been sacri- 
ficed. But he had already honorably done all that his country 
might demand of him in that first trial. He bitterly com- 
plained that the reinforcements, which might have given to 
his triumph the completeness of a victory, had failed him. 
A year afterwards, when he was in the American camp at 
New York, he was informed how narrowly he had escaped 



THE RECKONING. 5 1 

with his life, A British sergeant who was brought into the 
camp, on meeting there with Prescott, called him by name, 
Prescott inquired how or where he had known him. The 
man replied that he knew him well, and that his acquaintance 
began at the battle in Charlestown. Prescott had there been 
pointed out to him as the commander, and in the first two acts 
had been singled out by him with a deliberate aim. Though 
Prescott's position at each time was such as to convince the 
sergeant that the shot would be fatal, he was unharmed. 
On the third assault, impelled by the same purpose, he had 
charged Prescott at the point of the bayonet ; but the strong 
arm and the sword of the commander thrust aside the weapon, 
and the baffled sergeant judged him to be invulnerable. 

THE RECKONING. 

The number of the provincials in the whole action of the 
day, including the occasional reinforcements, and those who 
came only to cover the retreat, did not exceed 4,000. Of these 
1 1 5 were killed, 305 were wounded, and 30 were taken pris- 
oners, making our whole loss 450, Prescott's regiment suffered 
most severely. 

The whole British loss was estimated by the Provincial Con- 
gress, on their best information, at 1,500, and as returned by 
Gage, was 1,054, among them 13 commissioned officers killed, 
and 70 wounded. Of the killed were i lieutenant-colonel, 
2 majors, and 7 captains. Loud and agonizing was the wail- 
ing in Boston, when through that night and all the next 
Sunday boats, drays, and stretchers, and all the means of 
transport, were put to service to carry the wounded and the 
dying from the fearful scene. The hospitals were crowded 
wuth the sufferers, and many places designed for quite other 
purposes were put to that exigent use. The sympathies of 
the inhabitants of the town were engaged alike for friends 
and foes. The following brief extract from a letter from Mr. 
Grant, one of the surgeons of the British army in Boston, to 
a friend in Westminster, written on the sixth day after the 



52 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

battle, revives the realities of the occasion. " I have scarce 
had time sufficient to eat my meals, therefore you must expect 
but a few lines. I have been up two nights, assisted by four 
mates, dressing our men of the wounds they received the last 
engagement. Many of the wounded are daily dying, and 
many must have both legs amputated. The provincials had 
either exhausted their ball, or they were determined that every 
wound should prove mortal. Their muskets were charged 
with old nails and angular pieces of iron, and from most of 
our men being wounded in the legs, we are inclined to believe 
it was their design, not wishing to kill the men, but to leave 
them as burdens on us, to exhaust our provisions and engage 
our attention, as well as to intimidate the rest of the soldiery." 
The stir and business of the British forces on their occu- 
pancy of the heights which they had so dearly won may best 
be gathered from Howe's Orderly Book, under the date of 
the day following. 

" General Howe's Orders. 

Heights of Charlestown, 
June iSth, at nine o'clock morning. 

The troops will encamp as soon as the equipage can be brought 
up. 

Tents and provisions may be expected when the tide admits of 
transporting them to this side. 

The corps to take the duty at the intrenchment near Charles- 
town Neck, alternately. The whole (those on the last-mentioned 
duty excepted) to furnish the third of their numbers for work, with 
officers and non-commissioned officers in proportion, and be relieved 
every four hours. 

The parties for work to carry their arms, and lodge them securely 
while on that duty. 

General Howe expects that all officers will exert themselves to 
prevent the men from straggling, quitting their companies or pla- 
toons, and, on pain of death, no man to be guilty of the shameful 
and infamous practice of pillaging in the deserted houses. 

When men are sent for water, not less than twelve, with a non- 
commissioned officer, to be sent on that duty. 



THE RECKONING. 53 

The 47th Regiment to continue at the post they now occupy. 
The soldiers are by no means to cut clown trees, unless ordered. 

General Howe hopes the troops will in every instance show an 
attention to discipline and regularity on this ground, equal to the 
bravery and intrepidity he, with the greatest satisfaction, observed 
they displayed so remarkably yesterday. He takes this opportunity 
of expressing his public testimony to the gallantry and good con- 
duct of the officers under his command during the action, to which 
he in a great measure ascribes the success of the day. He con- 
siders particularly in this light the distinguished efforts of the 
Generals Clinton and Pigot. 

The corps of Light Infantry will relieve the Grenadiers at the 
advanced intrenchment this evening, at seven. 

When the 52d Regiment encamps, an officer and twenty men of 
that corps will remain at the post they now occupy." 

" General Orders. 

Head-quarters, Boston', 19th June, 1775. 

The Commander-in-chief returns his most grateful thanks to 
Major-General Howe for the extraordinary exertion of his military 
abilities on the 17th instant. He returns his thanks also to Major- 
General Clinton and Brigadier-General Pigot for the share they took 
in the success of the day, as well as to Lieutenant- Colonels Nesbit, 
Abercrombie, Gunning, and Clarke, Majors Butler, Williams, Bruce, 
Tupper, Spendlove, Smelt, and Mitchell, and the rest of the offi- 
cers and soldiers, who, by remarkable efforts of courage and 
gallantry, overcame every disadvantage, and drove the rebels from 
their redoubt and strongholds on the heights of Charlestown, and 
gained a complete victory." 

"June 27th, 1775. 

The preservation of the few houses left in Charlestown (as much 
as possible) unimpaired, being an important object, any of the sol- 
diers detected in future in attempting shamefully to purloin any 
part of these buildings will assuredly be punished most severely. 
The General considers such instances of devastation and irregular- 
ity a disgrace to discipline." 

But though the sword was lifted against our fathers by their 
own brethren, and in a cause which we must pronounce to 
have been unrighteous and tyrannical, we feel impelled to pay 



54 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

a just tribute to the bravery and gallantry of the British offi- 
cers and soldiers upon the field. To climb boldly and march 
forward, as they did thrice, and bare their bosoms to the 
weapons of desperate men, was a trial of their prowess which 
allows us to withhold from them no praise or glory which we 
give to our patriots, save that belonging to those who were 
the champions of the better cause. The highest honor which 
we can bestow upon the heroism of the enemy, is, in regret- 
ting that the King and his ministers found such devoted ser- 
vants. 

THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT STRUGGLE. 

Now, if it were to be affirmed that the intrenching and 
the daring, though desperate, defence of Breed's Hill was the 
most critical, or, at least, the most important, action of our 
Revolutionary War, the assertion might be set down to the 
account of a rhetorical exaltation, to local partiality, or to an ill- 
proportioned estimate of other conflicts. Rival claimants might 
arise as the champions of the fame of our other battle-fields. 
Yet, without a word or a figure of exaggeration, the battle of 
June 17th may be ranked as chief in importance in the calen- 
dar of our fights. The whole protracted struggle was deci- 
sively influenced through its seven years by this, its initiatory 
contest. The battle was fought by the provincials in earnest, 
with determined spirit, with proud success, though not with 
temporary victory ; and therefore it gave the impulse of a good 
beginning to the whole conduct of the war. The risks of the 
enterprise were fearful, almost appalling, as seen by our wisest 
and boldest counsellors. But they counted the cost up to that 
critical point at which high-souled and resolved men know 
that if they deliberate and hesitate any further, they lose 
their heroism in fondling their discretion. Let us make a 
brief review of the accomplished effects of the battle. 

It accomplished what, in all cases of strife and discord, it is 
very needful, yet not always easy, to bring fully into decision, — 
it drew a line of division, no longer to be blurred, between the 



THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT STRUGGLE. 55 

two contending parties, and brought them to a positive issue. 
There were then several hnks of union between England and 
her American provinces, formed by the various orders, classes, 
and coteries, gathered especially in this neighborhood. Some 
of our most honored and disinterested countrymen, and some 
of the British officers, engaged with protracted shrinking and 
with extreme reluctance in the hostilities. We had among us 
not only Tories and Republicans, Monarchists and Sons of 
Liberty, but timid and cautious hesitants, and attached friends 
to the restricted exercise of kingly, in opposition to demo- 
cratic, authority. There were moderate and immoderate men 
of both parties, neutral and lukewarm doubters of no party. 
While reading the inner history of the period, we readily im- 
agine the thousand social ties and domestic relations, the 
civilities of neighborhood and the common interest in the land 
across the water, which might well make it a difficult thing, a 
work requiring time, and even blood, to separate the people 
of this single province into two parties distinct at every point, 
so that they might face each other as enemies. Had it not 
been for the skirmish at Lexington and Concord, it is prob- 
able that matters might have remained quiet a little time 
longer, and that the colonists might have wasted many more 
words of petition upon the ministry. But the affair of the 
17th of June at once put a stop to any further halting between 
two opinions. 

Again, that action was of primary importance from its 
nerving influence upon the patriots, who, unknown to them- 
selves, had before them a war of weary protraction and 
exhausting drain, partaking largely of reverses and discour- 
agements. They learned this day to what they were equal in 
the confidence that God was on their side, making their cause 
just and good. That work of a summer's night was worth 
its cost to them. They lacked discipline, artillery, bayonets, 
powder and ball, food ; and, the greatest want of all, they lacked 
the delicious draught of pure, cool water for their labor-worn 
and heat-exhausted frames. They found that desperation would 



56 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

supply the place of discipline ; that the b^unt end of a musket, 
wielded with strong arras, might be as deadly as the thrust of 
a bayonet, and that a heavy stone might level an assailant as 
well as a charge of powder. As for food and water, the 
hunger they were compelled to bear unrelieved, and they 
cooled their brows only by the thick, heavy drops which 
poured before the sun. Yet it was their opening combat, and 
proudly did they bear away its laurels even upon their backs, 
which the failure of amraunition and reinforcements compelled 
them through part of their retreat to turn to the enemy. They 
did show their backs once to those who had already twice 
indulged them with the same spectacle ; and, if they retreated, 
it was not in abandonment of their cause, but that they might 
save their faces for later and bolder opportunities of confront- 
ing the foe. Their opening combat decided the spirit and 
the hope of all their subsequent campaigns. They had freed 
themselves during the engagement from all that human re- 
luctance which they had heretofore felt in turning deadly 
weapons against the breasts of former friends, yes, even of 
kinsmen. On that eminence, the first bright image of liberty 
of a free native land kindled the eyes of those who were ex- 
piring in their gore ; and the image passed between the living 
and the dying to seal the covenant, that the hope of the one, 
or the fate of the other, should unite them here or hereafter. 

It was the report of that battle, which, transmitted by swift 
couriers over the length and breadth of the continent, would 
everywhere prepare the spirit to follow it up with determined 
resistance to every future act of aggression. How can we 
exaggerate the relative importance of this day's action .-' Did 
y it not, in fact, n^t only open, but make the contest, dividing 
into two parties not only those determined for the ministry or 
for enfranchisement, but also all timid, hesitating, reluctant 
neutrals .'' It was impossible after this to avoid taking a side. 
It rendered all reconciliation impossible, till it should offer 
itself in the shape of independence. It echoed the gathering 
cry that brought together our people from their farms and 



THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT STRUGGLE. 57 

workshops, to learn the terrible art which grows more merci- 
ful only as it is more ferociously, that is, skilfully, pursued. 
The day needs no rhetoric to magnify it in our revolutionary 
annals. When its sun went down, the provincials had parted 
with all fear, hesitation, and reluctance. They found that it 
was easy to fight. The awful roar of the death-dealing en- 
ginery associated itself in their minds with all their wrongs, and 
all their hopes, and with the sweet word of liberty. The pen 
with which petitions had been written, they found to be, for its 
use, a child's toy. Words of remonstrance left no impression 
on the air. There was but one resource. From the village 
homes and farm-houses around, amid the encouraging exhor- 
tations, as well as the tearful prayers of their families, the 
yeomen took from their chimney-stacks the familiar and well- 
proved weapons of a life in the woods, and felt for the first 
time, not indeed what it was to have a country, but what they 
had to do to keep it. 

Another token of the relative importance of this day's con- 
flict was the effect which the announcement of it in England 
produced upon the ministry and the people. An infatuated 
cabinet had provoked the war under the grossest misappre- 
hension of the character and courage of the inhabitants of 
this province. An infatuated Parliament listened approv- 
ingly to speeches ratifying the measures of that ministry 
as of easy enforcement. The local information of our former 
governor, Pownall, the philosophy of Burke, and the tender 
appeals of Lord Chatham, had in vain pleaded with lords 
and commons that only conciliatory measures could avail with 
a race of men, Englishmen themselves, the descendants of 
exiles who had sought a heritage of freedom in a tamed wil- 
derness. The last three royal governors of Massachusetts 
had represented the provincials as under the control of a few 
ambitious leaders, demagogues, and revolutionists, who, by 
exciting speeches, cajoled and flattered the duped people. 
All that needed to be done by Parliament was to silence these 
fustian leaders. The principal cajoling proved to have been 



58 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

practised on the English people, who had been told that one 
regiment of the King's troops would sweep the provincials off 
the continent. The battle gave them a simple Rule of Three. 
If so many of his Majesty's soldiers had been necessary to 
reduce the square feet of ground on the peninsula of Charles- 
town, how many would be needed to sweep the continent .-• 

General Gage's account of the battle, acknowledging the 
loss of 226 killed and 828 wounded, was received in Lon- 
don, July 25th. While the ministry received with dismay 
this official intelligence, and kept it back from publication, 
many private letters accompanying it in its transit antici- 
pated with exaggerations its humiliating details. These 
being made public, the ministry gave forth their own ver- 
sion in the " Gazette " in as favorable a tone as was possible, 
from the despatches of Gage, Howe, and Burgoyne. The 
last of these wrote to Lord Stanley that " the day ended 
with glory." General Gage wrote to Lord Dartmouth, the 
head of the War Department : " The rebels are not the despi- 
cable rabble too many suppose them to be ; and I find it owing 
to a military spirit encouraged among them for a few years 
past, joined with an uncommon degree of zeal and enthu- 
siasm, that they are otherwise." 

On the reception in England of the accounts of the battle 
by the provincials, with their comments and resolves for the 
future, the English people were excited by varying feelings of 
sympathy for us, or vengeful hate against us, and either poured 
forth contempt and complaint against the ministry, or demanded 
of them more violence. The revenue which was promised 
to the exchequer of Great Britain from the taxation of the 
colonists was found to involve enormous charges for its col- 
lection, — in the cost of sending regiments of its own subjects, 
and of foreign mercenaries, with munitions of war, coals, fag- 
ots, vinegar, porter, hay, vegetables, sheep, oxen horses, and 
clothing — a good proportion of which fell into the hands 
of privateering provincials — across three thousand miles of 
water. In the words of the old saying, "A great deal of good 



THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT STRUGGLE. 59 

money was sent after what was bad." Highlanders were 
enhsted with the promise of receiving farms here " whose 
owners had been driven into the interior." 

The provincial account of the battle, dated July 25th, was 
sent to Arthur Lee, the agent in London, who caused it to be 
published. In September, three pestiferous vessels from here 
arrived at English ports, with sick and mutilated officers and 
men, and with the widows and children of the slain, wretched 
spectacles and wretched sufferers. 

The conduct of the battle on the part of the British generals 
was the subject of criticism, censure, and ridicule from the 
authorities and the people. Ingenious plans were set forth 
by which the British, unscathed, might have routed or en- 
trapped the provincials, as if they had been so many lambs. 

The despatches which had been repaired and transmitted 
to General Gage, directing his future movements, were accom- 
panied by others, recalling him and committmg the command 
to Howe. The latter, unmanned and dispirited, was to fare 
no better than did his predecessor. Remonstrances, petitions, 
and public meetings in England in opposition to the war, the 
reluctance of soldiers to enlist, the high bounties paid, and 
the increasing number of the avowed and secret friends of 
the Americans, were other effects of our opening battle. 

The British strongly fortified both Bunker's and Breed's 
Hills, posting their advanced guards upon the Neck. Thus 
they had two peninsulas and a little more room, offering 
them one great advantage, but no more. The cool heights of 
Charlestown were a refuge in the hot weather from the deadly 
atmosphere of Boston, which was one vast hospital. But the 
enemy had double labor and anxiety in defending their works 
against an insulting, vexatious, and ever-watchful foe quite 
near to them, and in the ensuing winter were exposed to 
severe sufferings from the intense cold and driving snow- 
storms, with insufficient shelter and no fuel. Nor did the 
possession of Charlestown at all increase their facilities for 
obtaining fresh provisions, in which the interior country 



6o THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



abounded. They had had little of the kind since the affair 
at Lexington. Handbills were printed at Cambridge, and 
sent floating on the wind across the lines into the rebel camp, 
taunting them with the contrast in their bills of fare. 
Thus: — 



Prospect Hill. 

1. Seven dollars a month. 

2. Fresh provisions,and in plenty. 

3. Health. 

4. Freedom, ease, affluence, and 

a good farm. 



Bunker's Hill. 

1. Threepence a da}^ 

2. Rotten salt pork. 

3. The scurvy. 

4. Slavery, beggary, and want. 



A British officer, writing from Boston, July 25, to a friend 
in London, says, they felt themselves worse off than the rebels, 
like a few children in a large crowd, insulted and menaced, 
and dreading an attack when the long nights came. He 
adds : " They know our situation as well as we do ourselves, 
from the villains that are left in town, who acquaint them with 
all our proceedings, making signals by night with gunpowder, 
and at day out of the church steeples. About three weeks 
ago, three fellows were taken out of one of the latter [the 
West Church], who confessed that they had been so employed 
for seven days. Another was caught last week swimming 
over to the rebels with one of their general's passes in his 
pocket. He will be hanged in a day or two." This officer 
and his friends would have had many more such tricks to 
report had their eyes been sharper. 

It would be of interest, were this the place for it, to sketch 
in some detail the experiences and the anxieties of both 
armies during the heats of the summer, the mellowness of the 
autumn, and the severities of the winter that followed upon the 
collision between them that has just been reviewed. As one 
in that series of miscalculations and blunders which charac- 
terized the whole conduct of the military leaders here, as of 
the parliamentary leaders in England, the successor of Gage 
failed to possess himself of the heights on the other side of 



THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT STRUGGLE. 6l 

Boston before Washington occupied them, and held the Brit- 
ish army under his guns. It was the middle of March. Our 
great chief was willing to allow General Howe a few days to 
pack up and take his fleet to other waters, because any moles- 
tation of him would have involved injury to the people of Bos- 
ton and their property. 

It is pleasant to close this rehearsal of a strife, amid scenes 
now smiling in all the loveliness and prosperity of a century of 
peace, by reference to a symbol more expressive even than that 
of a sword beaten into a ploughshare. When the first beams 
of the morning exposed to the view of the enemy the work 
which Colonel Prescott had been doing in the night, the sloop- 
of-\var " Falcon," in command of Captain Linzee, lying in the 
river, poured forth with her consorts the rattling shot in bom- 
barding it. The grandson of the American commander, the 
late William Hickling Prescott, the accomplished and distin- 
guished historian, and a man honored and endeared to all who 
knew him, married the granddaughter of Captain Linzee. 
For many years the swords of these two officers, crossed 
peacefully, ornamented one of the friezes of the library of the 
historian. And now, wdth an appropriate inscription for the 
legacy, they grace an apartment of the library of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Societ3\ 



62 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



NOTE. 

The writer of the preceding pages indulges here in some personal 
references, slight as they concern himself, more important as they 
relate to others. 

For a period of thirty consecutive years, 1 840-1 869, he, being 
then a resident of Charlestown, stood each year, on the morning 
and evening of the anniversary of the battle, on the heights which 
it made memorable, walked the grounds and reviewed the surround- 
ings of the scene. On the first of those years, — sixty-five years 
having elapsed since the conflict, — and for a few that followed, the 
historic scene in many of its interesting features was comparatively 
unchanged. On the top and skirts of Bunker's Hill there were but 
few dwellings amid its open pasture-grounds, and on the northern 
and^'western parts of it the ridges and trenches, the lines and the 
bastions of the elaborate fortifications made by the British while 
they held it, were easily traceable. Moulton's Hill, at the entrance 
upon the bridge to Chelsea, where the regulars landed and lunched, 
was then at its full elevation, and brick-kilns, tan-yards, and sloughy 
ground occupied most of the space between it and the slope of 
Breed's Hill. The skirts of both Bunker's and Breed's Hill down 
to the shore of the Mystic, were, for the most part, in their earlier 
condition, enabling one to trace the relation of the simple defences 
made by the rail-fence, and the breastwork and redoubt. There 
were many points on Breed's Hill from which a view was offered of 
Copp's Hill, and of the route of our forces from Cambridge. The 
slopes of Breed's Hill, on all the four sides, which have since been 
wholly removed for streets and dwellings, were then as nature left 
them. The Fitchburg, Boston and Maine, and Eastern Railroads, 
had not then spanned the river with their bridges. When strangers 
from abroad, and visitors, asked the writer's company in their out- 
look upon the scene, it had in large measure a self-explanatory 
aspect. He watched diligently the spades and picks of the laborers 
as they removed the earth on the sides of the hill. The depth of the 
levelling is indicated now by the height of the banks bordering the 
remnant that makes the site of the monument. Many cannon- 
balls, the missiles of the British ships and battery, came to light, 
of which the writer picked up two. 

While in 1840, and for a short time afterwards, the natural feat- 



\ 



NOTE. 63 

ures of the scene and its surroundings were so little changed, there 
were many persons Hving in the town and its neighborhood who 
had personal knowledge and vivid remembrances of things seen 
and heard on the memorable day which laid the town in ashes. 
Men and women, who were not quite fourscore years of age, as 
well as those who were older, who had been born and brought up 
in the town, and had, as children, been removed from it by their 
parents on the eve of the battle, to watch it from the neighboring 
hill-tops, and those who had even done some service on the day, 
were still lingering here or in the adjoining towns. Of what they 
had themselves seen and known they were interesting and trust- 
worthy relators. They were the less so as reporters of what they 
had heard from others. Confusion of memory and imagination, of 
course, would in some instances qualify the reliance to be given to 
their narrations. The writer had occasion to make allowance for 
that peculiar characteristic of aged and communicative persons, by 
which, when they are consulted as oracles about wonders and catas- 
trophes, they are apt to substitute the remembrances, experiences, 
and narratives of others for their own. Enough there were, how- 
ever, of surviving actors, witnesses, and sharers in the excitements 
and distresses of that day, to give efficient help to one who had its 
scenes and their surroundings before him, and had diligently read 
its printed and manuscript memorials, with the effort to reproduce 
its realities. There was a pathos in the relations of some of these 
aged people, which unerringly distinguished between the impres- 
sions written deep in the distresses of memory, and those caught 
by the imagination from the tales of others. Those vv'ho had seen 
the happy homes of their childhood, with their little treasures, melt 
away in the conflagration ; those who had heard the roar of the mus- 
ketry and cannon, and had looked upon the wounded borne off to 
some chance shelter ; those who were the first to return impov- 
erished and homeless to the scene of ruin, marked by tottering 
chimney-stacks, cellars of rubbish, and charred well-sweeps, to re- 
claim at least their spot of redeemed soil, — might be trusted by one 
who listened to them as speaking the truth. 

The grandparents of Ex-Ma3'ors Timothy Thompson Sawyer and 
Richard Frothingham — who are cousins — left their home in 
Charlestown on the evening of the 19th of April, and crossed the 
river into Maiden, thence to look upon the wreck of so much that 
was dear to them. On their return to the scene of ruins, their son, 
Timothy Thompson, was the first male child born on the spot, Feb. 



64 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] MILL. 

24, 1777. His mother lived to enjoy the visit of Lafayette, the 
laying of the corner-stone of the Monument, and the delivery of 
Webster's oration, at its completion, and died in 1848, in her ninety- 
third year. The memory of the venerable lady held what was not 
to be found in books. The newspapers and posters of the time 
were filled with advertisements of things lost or stolen. In many 
cases members of scattered families were, for some time, ignorant 
of each other's whereabouts. 

The many ancient tombs in the burial-hill, with their armorial 
bearings and their extinct names, show that a number of families, 
once resident with ample means in the town, have lost their places 
on the list of inhabitants, and left no representatives. Such of 
them as were living at the time, driven from their homes and re- 
duced to want, never returned again. 

In 1841, the writer was invited by a military company to prepare 
and deliver an " oration," for a celebration, in connection with the 
civil authorities of the anniversary of the battle for that year. In 
undertaking the task, he found to his surprise that there was not 
to be had in print nor in manuscript any extended, authentic, and 
adequate production that might be called a History of the Batde, 
written within a half century after it, by any actor or spectator, 
giving a connected account of the preparation, the conduct and 
events in detail which it involved. Returns, reports, and results 
communicated to the authorities of the time, for specific purposes, 
fragmentary sketches, extracts from journals, letters, and news- 
papers, there were in abundance, but no narrative reaching the 
standard of an historical monograph. Perhaps an exception should 
be made to the sweep of this statement, in a recognition of the 
earnest efforts of the late Colonel Samuel Swett, of Boston, who in 
18 18 contributed to an edition of Humphrey's " Life of General Put- 
nam," " An Historical and Topographical Sketch of Bunker Hill 
Battle." This was prepared while the contention was waging 
fiercely among the champions of the different names claimed for 
the chief or the divided honors of the command on the 17th of June. 
Colonel Swett twice enlarged his sketch, and published it in a 
pamphlet, with much new and valuable matter gathered by his in- 
quiries from his military friends and many survivors of the field. 
His laborious and zealous investigations were most opportunely 
pursued ; and their results in their last form were made public in 
1826 and 1827, in connection with the then recent ceremonies at 
the laying of the corner-stone of the monument. He too, however, 



NOTE. 65 

was charged with exhibiting the spirit, prejudices, and favoritism of 
a partisan. Though he says that " Colonel Prescott led the way " 
from Cambridge, he adds, " General Putnam having the principal 
direction and superintendence of the expedition." Now that the 
original witnesses and actors are all departed, each subsequent 
investigator must make the best use he can of all primaiy and 
secondary authorities. Mr. Richard Frothingham, born and living 
under the shadow of the monument, in his admirable " History of 
the Siege of Boston," first published in 1849, and since revised, has 
given a most elaborate and faithful history of the battle. 

The present writer had been privileged for some years by the 
acquaintance and kindly regards of the late Judge William Prescott, 
and of his son, the late eminent historian, William Hickling Pres- 
cott, — son and grandson of Colonel Prescott. On learning of 
the task in which the writer was engaged, both these honored men 
expressed their warmest interest in his inquiries, and contributed to 
aid them. The venerable Judge was then in his seventy-ninth year. 
Those who remember him, while recalling the grace and dignity, 
the purity and elevation of his character, will also be reminded of 
the exquisite modesty and retiring reserve which were so observable 
in him. He had read in silence the many publications from the 
year 1818, in which different writers had appeared as champions or 
advocates of the claims of the several officers to the command of 
the detachment sent to Charlestown on the night before and on the 
day of the battle. Of course his filial feelings and his sense of 
justice were aggrieved by the dispute and pleas which deprived his 
honored and patriotic father of his rightful laurels. But he entered 
no remonstrance ; he neither wrote nor publicly spoke on the side 
which he well knew to be that of simple truth. He was content in 
the belief that the time would come, with the investigation, and the 
voice and the pen that would set the facts of the case on the page 
of history. He was himself a youth in his thirteenth year on his 
father's farm in Pepperell on the day of the batde, and his father 
lived twenty years after it. With frank and assured confidence he 
communicated to the writer that his father always regarded and 
spoke of himself as in full command at the battle, as having 
received and fulfilled the order of General Ward to intrench and 
defend the works, as having conducted the movements of the day, 
and made return of its issue at head-quarters. 

With such opportunities and helps, the " oration " asked for was 
prepared, delivered, and then published. The historical details in 

9 



66 THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

it, with original documents, and an account of the monument, were 
afterwards brought together by the writer into a small volume, 
published anonymously by Mr. C. P. Emmons, of Charlestown, in 
1843. Several thousand copies of this publication have been 
issued, and it is now out of print. In a number of the "New York 
Historical Magazine " for June, 1868, devoted to the battle, this pub- 
lication is referred to and quoted as " Emmons's Sketches." The 
matter of the oration and of the book is substantially given in the 
preceding pages. 

Sincerely and thoroughly convinced as the writer became, through 
his investigations, that Colonel Prescott was the trusted and the 
responsible leader and commander in the action at Charlestown, 
he assigned to him all the honors which belonged to him as such, 
without needing to reduce in any respect the laurels of his asso- 
ciates, except in not subordinating him, as others had done to them. 
It is believed that for the first time the full truth was then set 
forth in connection with historic details. One recognition especi- 
ally rewarded the writer. He therefore ventures to put in print a 
letter which he received from Judge Prescott, acknowledging the 
gift of a copy of his " Oration." He hardly need apologize for not 
mutilating it, by suppressing the personal compliments which it con- 
tains. The letter was written from the Judge's summer residence. 

"Nahant, July 19th, 184 1. 

My dear Sir, — I heartily thank you for the copy of the excellent 
and eloquent oration which you had the goodness to send me. It is by 
far the most intelligible and correct account I have seen of that rather 
confused battle. I beg you to believe we are not unmindful of the very 
kind and flattering terms in which you have spoken of my father, not 
forgetting his descendants. I have always thought — indeed known 
— that the accounts commonly given of that action were incorrect, at 
least, and you may be assured it afforded me no little pleasure to find 
that an orator selected to commemorate the anniversary in a town whose 
inhabitants were witnesses to the battle, was able, and had the independ- 
ence at this late day, upon a careful examination of facts, to do justice 
to Colonel Prescott in appordoning the honors of the battle-field among 
the heroes of the day. This oration, though but a pamphlet in form, will, 
I doubt not, lead the way to more correct views on the subject. The 
loss of the record of the appointment to the command, the great popular- 
ity of some names, and the efforts of friends, doubtless contributed to 
making and keeping alive the erroneous impressions that have more 
or less prevailed. No friend of Colonel Prescott ever wrote a line, or 
took an affidavit or declaration on the subject, to my knowledge. General 



NOTE. 67 

Dearborn's statement was wholly unknown to me till I saw it in print, 
and then I much regretted its appearance. It is a delicate and difficult 
task, as you observe, to distribute the honors of a battle among the leaders ; 
and it is more especially so when the rank of officers is unsettled, orders 
aifc wanting, and the action somewhat confused. But the principle you 
have adopted, to leave it to be determined by the parts acted by the 
different competitors, one would think, could not be complained of. 

I am particularly pleased with your just remarks on the effects of the 
battle. They ought not to be overlooked or forgotten. The Americans 
lost the field, it is true ; but they won a great moral victory, which was 
felt in every battle to the end of the war. It made the brave Howe a 
cautious, if not timid, commander. 
I am, my dear Sir, 

Ever respectfully and very faithfully yours, 

William Prescott." 

That the Judge should have shared with his father thirty-three 
years of their joint lives, and not have the fullest means of knowing, 
in filial confidence, the place which he had filled and the service 
he had performed on the memorable day, is, of course, inconceiv- 
able. The more rare and impressive are the modesty and the self- 
respecting dignity which he manifested, when pens and tongues 
were so busy and so emphatic in the championship of other names 
as leaders and commanders, in not entering into the controversy 
in his father's advocacy. The writer was also assured by Judge 
Prescott — indeed he has it in writing from his own pen — that 
Colonel John Trumbull, the painter, in 1786, of the fancy piece of 
the '* Battle of Bunker Hill," in which Putnam appears as the com- 
mander of the redoubt, at Judge PreScott's dinner-table, expressed 
his sincere regret at the error he had committed, and his desire 
and purpose to rectify it. 

It was not through any set purpose of depreciating the rightful 
claims of one, or of exaggerating those of another, in the discharge 
of honorable and responsible semces, nor with any object of con- 
founding the truth of history, that such divergences of statement 
and displacement of official services had come into the rehearsal of 
the events of the day. The confusion of the whole action, from its 
start to its close ; the traversing of the field by some, and the sta- 
tionary places of others ; the relative importance assigned to vari- 
ous positions and movements on it ; the different reports which 
different pairs of eyes made to different observers ; and the conclu- 
sion drawn by individuals that the highest military rank carried 
with it the right of command, — these, and various other obvious 



68 THE BATTLE OE BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 

suggestions, will go far to explain the facts we have recognized in 
the championship of one or another of our officers. As a conse- 
quence, however. Colonel Prescott had been, to say the least, de- 
preciated on the canvas and on the pages of many narratives. 

Even in the local territorial awards recognized in the distribution 
of memorials in the town of Charlestown, this relative neglect, 
though never intended, had a significant manifestation. Up to 
1857, Charlestown had four conspicuous public grammar-school 
edifices, and four contiguous streets, bearing with admirable pro- 
priety the names, respectively, of Winthrop, Harvard, Warren, and 
Bunker Hill. Winthrop, as first resident governor of the Colony, 
with the charter, had come to Charlestown on another 17th of June, 
1630, and began its settlement. Harvard, a revered minister of the 
town, and the founder of the college, had died, and was buried 
here. Warren had fallen on the Hill, and received all the honors of 
the patriot. Bunker Hill Street crossed over the brow of that sum- 
mit, and the school-house, so named, was at its base. There was 
also a street bearing the name of Putnam. A short side-street had 
the name of Prescott. 

When, in 1857, the increase of the population made another and 
a very large school-edifice necessary, the writer, being a member of 
the school committee of Charlestown, then become a city, availed 
himself of the opportunity to urge the recognition of the name of 
"Prescott." He succeeded in his object, and was privileged by an 
appointment to deliver the address inaugurating the spacious build- 
ing, Dec. 15, 1857. 

Of course, the distinguished historian, then living in Boston, was 
asked to give his personal presence on an occasion meant to do 
honor to a name borne through three generations, by soldier, judge, 
and scholar. The writer was well aware of that shrinking diffi- 
dence of his which had in no case ever yielded to the many attempts, 
made alike in America and in Europe, to draw from him, in answer 
to compliments, a speech either at the dinner-table or on the plat- 
form. He was not surprised, therefore, in receiving, in answer to 
the invitation, a note, from which the following is an extract : " You 
know my infirmity in the way of public speaking. To talk frankly 
with you, I should not be satisfied to be present on that occasion, so 
complimentary to myself, and sit like a dumb dog, as if I were not 
sensible of the distinguished honor conferred on me. Yet, as I have 
got on so far [sixty-one years] without opening my lips in public, 
I feel that it is now too late to begin." 



NOTE. 69 

Mr. Prescott, however, yielded his objections, on the assurance of 
immunity for his "infirmity," — a rare one for Americans. The 
mayor of the city, — the Hon. T. T. Sawyer, — wlio received him, 
the Honorable George S. Boutwell, Secretary of the Massachusetts 
Board of Education, Mayor Rice of Boston, and other guests of the 
occasion with generous hospitality, in his felicitous official address, 
said : " It is a common custom to give to public buildings names 
which shall express some idea of goodness, of usefulness, or of honor, 
or which shall connect the memory of some good or great man, or 
thing, with the edifice, and keep fresh in the mind the lesson which 
the name may convey. To this building we have attached the 
name of ' Prescott.' It will be suggestive of manliness, of faith- 
fulness, and of learning. It has character and accomplishment to 
recommend it ; tried merit, rather than ephemeral greatness, for the 
basis on which it rests ; and we have confidently adopted it for its 
appropriateness and value. We are on the soil of Bunker Hill 
[near the site of the ' Rail Fence '], and we are in the presence of 
one of Massachusetts' noblest sons ; and if we may appropriate the 
influence of both, and there is any value in a name, we can commit 
no error in adopting that of ' Prescott.' " 

In the writer's dedicatory address, after an allusion to the histo- 
rian's labors and fame, in his presence, he added : " If you were not 
here, I should say more. I must also respect the contract on which 
you come, — that the reserve which, in spite of your busy skill with 
your pen, has kept your lips closed upon all public occasions shall 
not be rudely broken in upon here by the necessity of a speech. 
Your presence in silence is a speech to us. I know you will not 
esteem it among the least of the encomiums lavished upon you by 
royal courts, elect academies, and the great Republic of Letters, 
that a school in which thousands are to be trained in wisdom bears 
your name, and that of your father, mother, and grandfather." 

Mr. Prescott rose and said, " There is no greater honor." 

On the occasion of this visit, the grandson of the Commander on 
June 17th was taken to see the statue of General Warren, on the 
Hill. He may have thought that a companion statue would find a 
rightful position there. 



Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 



HISTORY 



OF THE 



Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill, 

On June 17, 1775, 

FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES IN PRINT. 
AND MANUSCRIPT. 



BY 



GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



WITH A MAP OF THE BATTLE-GROUND. 



BOSTON: 
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 

1875. 



LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & COMPANY'S 
Late Ptiblications. 



DjfBc'.O-o.- 



PIANO AND SONG. How to Teach, How to Learn, antl 
How to Form a Judgment of Mu&ical Performances. Translated from 
the German of Friedrich Wieck Price $1.25. 

A POCKET EDITION OF ELLIS'S BUNKER HILL. A 

neat pocket edition of Dr. Ellis's ■' History of the Battle of Banker 
Hill," with Map, Description of the Monument, Sec, in substantial 
binding". 

THE LIFE OF JOHN WARREN, M.D. Suroeon in the 
Revolutionary Army. First Professor of Anatomy and Si'.rgerj' in 
Harvard College. By Edward Warren, M. D., Author o'" Life of 
Dr. John Collins Warren, i vol. 8vo. $5.00. 

SAMUELS. THE BIRDS OF NEW ENGLx\ND. Fifth 
Edition, Revised and Enlarged. $4.00. Colored plates, $7-50- 

''A very valuable and interesting work." — Prof. S. JV. Bai'rd, of 
Stn itJison ia n In si it 11 Hon . 

■' A book of real value." — Country Gentleman. 

'• A marvel of cheapness." — Prof. Hoyt, Nezv York. 

"It surpasses any work of the kind ever published." — Lucius E. 
Picksec/^cr, Pc7in. 

HISTORY OF BOSTON. A Topographical and Historical 
Description of Boston. By Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ISl. D. Second 
and Revised Edition, i vol. royal 8vo. With Ancient Maps and 
Plans. 730 pp. $5.00. 

THE STORY OF GUTENBERG AND THE ART OF 

PRINTING. A book of wonderful interest. By Mrs. Emily C. 
Pearson. With numerous Illustrations. $3.00. 



581 Washington Street (opposite Franklin] 



J NO. S. LOCKWOOD. WALTER U. DROOKS. PHINEAS S. TOBEV. 



LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO., 

I 

(Siicces'iors to iVovcs, Holmes, ^ Co.') 

^u Wishers, l^oohscllcrs, anb Stittroncrs, 



Invite attention to their varied stock, which they 
offer on the most favorable terms. 



Catalogues of all Publishers furnished on application. 

Books imported to ordtM- on the most favorable terms. 

American axd Foreign Periodicals furnished at lowest 
rates. 

School Books supplied to School Committees, Teachers, and 
Pupils, wholesale and retail. 

Books mailed to any part of the United States, postpaid, on 
receipt of price. 



Z., B., ^ Co. ivould invite special attention of Library Committees 
and other book buyers to their superior facilities for furnishing 
every thing in the line of BOOKS or STATIONERY, with 
pr07nptness and at low prices. 



Special attention is now asked to the publications of 

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

(Instituted ix 1S14). 

Of which Lockwood, Brooks, & Co. are now the sole 2:»ublishers. 
Catalogues furnished gratis on application. 



^^ 


















d c<x <<:: 



fill 



^*W V^ 2^ 



: t'. **- ^.^: v-*:- c - 



S:^ ^' . ^': 


















tc 


r <!'; 


«_ CCCk 


^^- 


f: 


- ' . <:c; 


C_ ccfe^ 


<z._ 




^ <: < 


<C_ CCG 


^^- - 




-' <L'C' 


<1 (CC^ 


<^ 


t_ 






<1< 


d re « 


^" 




»^- 


=' 


<1< 


Cl « 6'. • 


cr 






d " «-^ 


«c 


^ 4C<< . 


<r*6 < 




<l<c_> 


O'e- C 




cc^o 


o^i <r. 




«c *^ 


<^_.ii < 


r . 


^ o-^*- 


<:■<«:<: 




*<c c: 


C;' -<■ c": 


€ 


«:: <-■ 


C"" <r; 


< 






<a 




c c 


4C 


'^r^ ' ^^ 


c c 


<«: 


-^^: - .-^T' 


c",c: 


«*z 


^^ ^C" ^ 


c <?c 


<«C5 


^^^ ^dT 


c c <r 


<arr 


1 ^ 


c c 

. c c 




<!C1'- 




Cj *< c 




««:> 


^^~ 


c < 


iSCTj 


aCT' 


^CZI 


c ^ 


^K^< 




^jm 


C ■ r 


^^^'' 


Cj^ ''< 


^^__ 


C<^(' « 


^^ji . 


j^^c f 


.^K^ 


C ^ 4 


id^-^ 


d -- ' 


^dT 


': < 4 


■dT'C 









: ^ cc ^ 
c ^ or < 

<^ c: <sC c 

< c: <acr < 

cc oo: c 

cc. Cd c 

cc OCT c 



cc •■^- ' 



^ CC «ci;c 






<:.c<tc-' 






cc«: c c 
ocacLcv 



CiC^^-wKil^ 






"Cicc^«x<<- 






< d 






: ^^ : 















« < «: 









«c: cox 

— CCCc 






^- ■ .4C^:- 
^ . .'<«:: 
^ cCC 















r <-<c: « 

^ COS ex <f~ 

' 'OCT c< ore 















3^S :?=?" cct 
'5^ ^ <^'f'*^ 

->^ S CfC 









.1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





011769 860 9 





